The Myth of Green Marketing : Tending Our Goats at the Edge of Apocalypse [1 ed.] 9781442657427, 9780802080356

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THE MYTH OF GREEN MARKETING: T E N D I N G OUR GOATS AT THE EDGE OF APOCALYPSE

In this groundbreaking study, Toby Smith analyses the role that social myths such as green marketing play in public understanding of the environmental crisis. This book introduces the concept of hegemony into environmental politics, using the concept to elucidate the political, economic, and social alliance that sustains our belief in industrial expansionism. The ecological crisis of the late twentieth century presents a challenge to the very foundations of this system. The hegemonic system reacts to a threat to its structure by producing social myths that provide a 'common sense' understanding of the threat. Smith examines one such social myth, the contemporary phenomenon known as green marketing, and how it came to reinforce, rather than challenge, the ethics of productivism. By analysing green marketing as it relates primarily to the early 1990s corporate campaigns of companies such as McDonald's, Shell, and Mobil, Smith demonstrates how these voices weave together an understanding of green consumerism using familiar language from economic and liberal democratic discourses. The Myth of Green Marketing is an original and important contribution to the field of environmental studies. As the first book on green marketing, it is sure to raise controversy with its unique discussion of the cultural and social aspects of environmental issues. TOBY M. SMITH is Assistant Professor in the Problem Centred Studies Department at University College of Cape Breton.

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TOBY M. SMITH

The Myth of Green Marketing: Tending Our Goats at the Edge of Apocalypse

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1998 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-4175-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-8035-9 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Smith, Toby Maureen, 1947The myth of green marketing : tending our goats at the edge of apocalypse Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-4175-2 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8035-9 (pbk.) i. Green marketing. 2. Consumption (Economics) - Environmental aspects. 3. Industrialization - Environmental aspects. 4. Environmental degradation. 5. Social responsibility of business. I. Title. HF5413.S641998 304.2'8 €98-930328-4

The advertisement on pages 128 and 129 is reproduced by permission of International Business Machines Corporation. The advertisement on page 143 is reproduced by permission of Shell Chemicals Europe Limited (photo by Denis Waugh). University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Ginsberg, 'Howl'

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

ix

3

1 Theoretical Considerations 15 2 Resignification of 'Consume' 42 3 The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 4 Green Consumerism

88

5 Analysis of Examples 124 Conclusion

159

NOTES 165 REFERENCES INDEX 183

169

65

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Acknowledgments

My intellectual debt is enormous, but I am particularly grateful to the following people. I would like to thank Ernesto Laclau for his support and criticism during the research and writing of this project. His theoretical insights and complex way of understanding the political helped me to get some order into my chaotic, interdisciplinary thinking. I am grateful to Jane Hindley, David Howarth, Aletta Norval, and the participants of the weekly colloquium in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, for providing an inspiring context within which to think, talk, and write about ideas. As well, I thank Albert Weale and Andrew Dobson for reading and providing helpful suggestions regarding the original manuscript. I also appreciate the permission granted to me by IBM and Shell Chemicals Europe for the reproduction of their advertisements. I am grateful to the University of Toronto Press for making this book possible. I thank Catherine Frost, Margaret Williams, and Virgil Duff for their editorial help. As well, I have benefited from the suggestions and comments of two anonymous readers. It is with sincere gratitude that I acknowledge funding received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the Overseas Research Scholarship Committee of Great Britain. Finally I would like to thank Joe Ablitt for his long-time support, encouragement, and patience. The epigraph from 'Howl/ by Allen Ginsberg, is taken from The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press).

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THE MYTH OF GREEN MARKETING

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Introduction

It is with some uncertainty that the human race approaches the twentyfirst century. Holes in the ozone, acid rain, pesticides in the ground water, dead whales bloated with toxins, mercury poisoning, and, of course, global warming all loom above us like the cloud behind the silver lining. Then there are the names: Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Minamata, Chernobyl, each one a metaphor for severe and permanent suffering. They may also be signposts on the road to Apocalypse. Many of us, of course, will not make it to the close of the millennium; natural disasters, disease, and starvation are claiming ever more lives in the South. Predictions of global warming suggest that this tragedy will only increase. Since 1987 a number of international scientific conferences have been held on the ozone and global warming, each more urgent in tone than the last. Clearly, among large numbers of scientists, a consensus has formed, which has had an impact beyond the esoteric community of career environmentalists. It is generally agreed that the main source of this crisis is the industrial development of the North over the last 200 years. If this is the case, radical reform of development trends and the living of everyday life will be required if we are not to be the unhappy victims of our own pretentious dreams. High-level conferences have been held and international protocols and standards established to reduce production of chlorofluorocarbons and greenhouse gases. There is still not the response, nationally or internationally, however, that one might expect, given the serious nature of the possible consequences. Nor is there evidence to suggest that large numbers of ordinary people have been gripped with a fear of significant

4 The Myth of Green Marketing and permanent ecological damage. Although there are minor exceptions, there has not been a wholesale re-examination of ecologically questionable lifestyle and personal habits. If we are indeed approaching the precipice of imminent ecological collapse as a result of our 2OO-year orgy of environmental vandalism, why are we not shaken to our collective philosophical core? Why do we continue to promote industrialization as the root of all good things? Why do we continue to erode finite resources, increase consumption levels, and allow high pollution ratios? Why do we continue to refer to industrialization as development, as though the planet could really survive all peoples' imitating the arrogant lifestyle of the North? In short, why are most of us unable or unwilling to come to terms with the 'dystopian' side of industrialization? I believe the study of hegemony can help us to understand our inertia. By hegemony I generally mean the popular acceptance of a coherent world view, which includes a wide range of conceptual and material elements. This matrix is constantly dynamic, fending off competing 'explanations' of events that threaten the apparent naturalness and truth of the dominant explanation. In modern economies, we think of industrialization as the motor of economic growth, but it is much more. Industrialization conditions our orientation towards both human life and the natural world. However material its manifestations, industrialization also has a mythic presence. On the symbolic plane of images, promises, and dreams, industry may achieve the best possible outcomes. Obviously, this Utopian side of industrialization is reinforced by a relatively high standard of living, primarily in the North. But our emotional attachment to industrialization is more likely a product of centuries of faith in its promises than it is a result of a reasoned response to its actuality. After all, it is equally obvious that industrialization has failed most of the world's population. It is the mythical component of industrialization upon which I wish to focus. As human beings, we perceive and understand the material world at the level of abstractions, languages, and symbols. We act on the basis of these perceptions and beliefs. This fact has been largely ignored in the field of environmental studies, and it is a dangerous omission. If environmentalists do not sufficiently explore the power of common beliefs to condition behaviour as it relates to ecological issues, they will continue to develop ineffectual arguments and recommendations. It follows that if we want people to behave in ideal ways regarding ordinary activities, such as driving cars and using toxins in the home, it may be

Introduction 5 useful to try constructing arguments and policies that use existing belief structures as a kind of intellectual conduit. In other words, we need to fight the symbolic on the level of the symbolic, not merely to provide material evidence illustrating the fallacy of belief. Facts never speak for themselves. Although one may have a popular understanding of a set of facts, it is usually possible for the unsympathetic to twist, ignore, marginalize, or otherwise disregard unhappy facts that contradict a lifetime of mythical attachment to a satisfying dream. It is time for environmentalists to take the symbolic seriously and understand the power of its tenacity. There is a cacophony of information out there from all different points of view regarding the environmental crisis. A wide number of interpretations and meanings are possible from the same 'facts/ The challenge for the ordinary individual bombarded by this confusion of information and explanations is not to sort out the true from the false, but to put together a credible understanding at the level of common sense. Information can be brought together in different ways to accommodate different points of view. Whichever community of interest does that first is going to have the ear of the person on the street. In this way, the ordinary details of life become sites of political struggle. To illustrate this point I shall consider the phenomenon of green consumerism. While many people still apply ethical considerations when purchasing many products, we rarely see in the late 19908 the same massive campaigns and major debates we saw at the high point of the movement in the late 19805 and early 19905. It is particularly useful to consider the green-consumerist myth in that period because many promotions were less subtle than they are today, which allows a more fruitful examination of its logics. And those logics have not changed, even if green consumerism is no longer a household word. The everyday material actuality of industrialization and the concomitant metaphysical faith in its ability to improve the quality of human life are part of a complex hegemonic system I shall term 'the discourse of productivism/ In spite of marginalized criticism, for over 200 years this material/metaphysical framework has formed an apparently closed political-economic-cultural totality. The hegemony of this matrix has always suffered a certain amount of subversion. As we face the urgent problems of global warming and ozone depletion, however, historical faith in the omnipotence of industrialization is open to question. The discourse of productivism is being challenged by its own dystopian shadow. This rupture in productivist hegemony creates a gap in its

6 The Myth of Green Marketing coherence, revealing the uncertain nature of what is normally taken to be a natural, permanent social structure. Two possible outcomes agitate for space in this gap. One is the unlikely event that the interwoven matrix itself may disintegrate, forcing us to re-evaluate our expansionistic and exclusively anthropocentric orientation. Such a re-evaluation would have grave implications for all discourses central to Western identity, for example: economic theories, such as capital accumulation and comparative advantage; social truisms, such as class struggle; and cultural tenets, particularly belief in the primacy of the entrepreneurial individual and the right of unlimited personal accumulation. None makes sense in an ontology with no privileges. The other possible consequence is that the rupture becomes, at least temporarily, 'sutured/ that is, conceptually sewn back together. Such a move represents a significant challenge, because calling into question the integrity of productivist discourse confronts the authority of science and, by extrapolation, Western ontological and epistemological assumptions. A serious crisis in belief is possible here. The attempt to suture the rupture would involve reinforcing a damaged belief system that is interwoven with a multitude of mutually supporting factors. As environmental instability increases, dystopian aspects of productivism and industrialization, previously marginalized or trivialized, now threaten to subvert radically the science/technology/rationalistic paradigm we have lived within since at least the Enlightenment. Our belief in a productivist ethic and a technological instrumentality comes into conflict with our faith in science and reason. After all, it was science and technology that developed the conceptual and material techniques that led to the present environmental awareness. It provided the evidence that, once examined with Reason, should encourage us to stop ecological erosion. Thus, it was from the very heart of productivism itself that the contingent nature of its hegemony was revealed. I suggest, however, that we are unable to engage in a profound reassessment of this productivist/industrialist/expansionist ethic because its Utopian profile is central to the very construction of modern Western consciousness. The conceptual framework through which we interpret the world, identify problems, and develop solutions is shaped and confined by a particular set of understandings. Primary is an anthropocentric ontology that shapes our privileged human identity in relation to other objects in the physical world. That is, we believe human beings to be unquestionably more valuable than any other life form or substance on Earth. Basic assumptions about human nature are a part of this belief.

Introduction 7 Science and technology form the basis of our epistemology. When we consider these convictions together, it is not surprising to find that expansionistic industrialization may seem to many to be the only possible outcome of 'discoveries' inevitably arrived at as a consequence of a particular and fixed human nature. There has always been a Utopian and a dystopian way of viewing productivism both as an ethic and as an activity. We privilege a Utopian reading over a dystopian reading even in the face of a significant crisis, such as possible ecological collapse. Our productivist consciousness ensures that we interpret challenges to the hegemony of productivism as marginal, immoral, irrelevant, silly, backward, politically selfinterested, misinformed, anti-progressive, elitist, unscientific, socialist utopianism, or simply unfortunate but correctable. The productivist ethic achieved its greatest impetus during the Enlightenment and has been perpetuated over centuries through a number of institutional and informal mechanisms. As mentioned earlier, whatever other properties our techno-scientific material world may include, it also contains a strong mythological component, which in both form and function is instrumental to the transmission of our productivist consciousness across generations. The myth of green consumerism operates as a suture, an attempt to hide the wound that contemporary environmentalists are making to the smooth fabric of productivist discourse. As an isolated activity, green consumerism as it was (and is) promoted probably has no effect on cleaning up the ecosystem; but neither will any other single factor. Existing damage is the consequence of more than 200 years of work. The list of contributing factors is long: a few examples include over-logging, over-cropping, and over-grazing, most forms of transport, as well as pumping industrial effluent into the atmosphere and waterways. Facilitating this activity has been a history of sympathetic changes in a number of related areas: political, legal, bureaucratic, technological, scientific, monetary, educational. The point is that there is no single, most important component of ecological change. The causes are multiple and so must be the approaches to change. It is not enough to have new laws if an expansionistic economic model still rules the world and attitudes of private accumulation continue to dominate. In any actualized solution, green consumerism would have to be integrated into any overall plan for domestic waste management, pollution reduction, and sustainable community. Another useful aspect of studying green consumerism is that a focus

8 The Myth of Green Marketing on the home has the political potential of mobilizing significant numbers of people using the ordinary as a conduit. This potential is underutilized, however, because debate is dominated by two positions that tend to foreclose that potential. On the one hand, many ecological purists, wrapped in the smug shroud of absolute ethics, feel contempt for the ordinary individual as a political subject. Autonomy, intellect, and moral duty are considered beyond the expectation of the average consumer. In the area of household maintenance this dismissal has unfortunate gender implications. Maria Mies writes that women go on 'shopping sprees' as a substitute for recognition and affection (1993, 255). Mary Mellor says women are attracted to 'shopping mall shrines' as compensation for not owning and controlling (1992, 203, 182). Sandy Irvine believes people 'gorge' themselves on 'spending sprees' (1989, 15). All three believe that unsuspecting individuals are lured into these uncontrollable consumer orgies by marketing masterminds. It seems that the consumer is much like a goat. Kept on a short leash for maximum control, the aimless creature, with its attraction to glittering trinkets, wanders erratically about, consuming anything from apples to barbed wire fences. On the other hand, the cheerleaders of sustainable expansionistic enterprise fail to be adequately critical because they assume, rather than argue, that it is possible to build a conserver society while increasing resource depletion and energy consumption. It seems that they promote counter-entropic illusions for the purpose of increasing corporate profits. The paradox of why this process works for large numbers of ecologically concerned consumers is the subject of this research. Consumerism is taken here to be a term that includes, but is not reduced to, the activity of consuming. The 'ism' aspect is the point at which the activity connects to a coherent and an integrated body of ideas that make sense of the activity. From at least Adam Smith on, the consumer has been at the heart of modern economic dynamics. 'Demand' as a category in economic theory is an aggregate of individual preferences. It presumes human nature to be autonomous and self-maximizing. The vision of the good life in productivist discourse is premised upon a highly industrialized, technologically advanced civilization. With the emergence of an economy where the consumer is central, it was essential that a reinforcing culture also emerge. When we refer to 'consumerism' as distinct from consuming, we imply the existence of a coherent background matrix through which an activity becomes a belief system. The category of consumer can be conceptually situated as an

Introduction 9 object of product!vist discourse. Consumerism cannot be considered an activity separate from the historically developed culture of consumerism, which is productivist discourse itself. Thus, the act of consuming is as much cultural as it is economic. But are all those who consume (as everyone must) involved in consumerism? Consumerism is usually used to describe a lifestyle that centres upon owning and accumulating commodities, where self-worth, the meaning of life, and personal satisfaction all are defined in relation to it. But as the phenomenon of green consumerism illustrates, there is no clear divide between hedonism and asceticism. Even if one makes only subsistence purchases, this act is still embedded in a particular economic, political, and social context. Moreover, that purchase functions as a signifier in a culturally loaded symbolic universe. These relationships weave together in a sensible way because productivism works as an organizing framework. In this way, it constantly hegemonizes and/or eliminates challenges to its coherence (productivism). Consequently, everyone in some sense is a consumer. Whether or not one believes it to be a cohesive belief system, personal purchases are still aggregated and they still signify. It is more context than intention that shapes interpretation of social or political statements. Furthermore, one is still part of several consumer niches, each having an identifiable profile that marketers target. In other words, one is part of a large, urbanized, modern society infused with overlapping discourses. There is no absolutely discrete, clearly articulated, available alternative. Consequently, I am not sure that it is possible or even useful to make a distinction between consume, consumer, and consumerism for the purposes of this argument. However, these terms will be discussed in more detail below. For the present, 'consume' will refer to the act of purchase. 'Consumer' will refer to an individual living in the industrialized North who makes a purchase for whatever reason. Also for the purposes of this argument, I make no distinction between good and bad, right and wrong consumers. Nor will I venture in any significant way into the field of environmental justice and the concept of need. These are very important areas of study, and they are relevant to the topic of consumption. I am not writing about every possible aspect of green consumerism, however, nor am I concerned, at this time, with fairness of distribution. Therefore, the concepts of need and justice will not be explored in this book, except as they relate to green consumerism as a hegemonic social myth. Consumerism is defined as a sign system with economic, political, social, and cultural overlapping features. Green consumerism will be discussed more fully in chapter 4.

io The Myth of Green Marketing The important question is not how these terms are defined, but how they came to be defined. What larger power struggle is the greenconsumerism (and consumerism per se) debate a part of and what is its role in that conflict? If popular concern regarding the environment is to be tapped and consumption voluntarily reduced, environmental theorists and activists must make some attempt to understand why people consume. What rational or emotional need is being met? Until then, self-righteous anti-consumerism campaigns will continue to fail. Meanwhile, that popular interest is effectively articulated by business and industry. I borrow the conceptualization of discourse from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, as they used it in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Their usage is preferred in part because it subsumes Wittgenstein's concept of 'language game/ which allows them to avoid defining discourse as a purely linguistic phenomenon (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 107-9). A broad conceptualization of discourse is useful because it provides a framework within which to situate actions and thoughts as well as language. Indeed, it is discourse that gives actions and behaviours (such as environmentally motivated purchases) meaning, that makes them literally 'sensible/ whereas in competing discourses, such as radical ecology, they are literally nonsensical. Hence, consumerism is not simply a belief about human nature and development; it includes a whole set of practices that actualize that idea structure. It seems that discourse and hegemony are similar in many respects. A discourse, however, is a linear concept: it is a linguistic and material conversation over time. In a sense, we can think of hegemony as a synchronic view and discourse as a diachronic view of similar processes. I use 'productivism' to refer to a discourse that embodies a wide collection of beliefs, practices, concepts, and sedimented structures that have been woven together from at least the time of the Enlightenment. This is an expansionistic, growth-oriented ethic. The capitalist economic system, central to the development of a productivist ethic, increased its social and political power, as well as its economic power during the Industrial Revolution. Associated with the consumer-centred economic theory of Adam Smith, this expansionistic ethic found its expression in the logics of mass production, generating new ideas to enhance production and encourage increasing consumption. Technological advancements, such as constantly modernized manufacturing equipment and forms of transportation, facilitated expansion and growth.

Introduction 11 Corresponding developments, such as management theories, electronic information, and currency transmission, as well as the generation of a huge advertising industry are also infused into the complex of productivism. In addition, scientific developments, including the Newtonian method of practice and beliefs about the nature of the physical world, were woven into productivist discourse, exhibiting the same expansionistic ethic through a drive for more discovery and application. Thus, an endless stream of synthetic materials, medical treatments, and increasing knowledge about ecological degradation are also manifestations of productivist discourse. Over time, political and legal practices and structures have sedimented, facilitating this expansionistic, growth-oriented ethic and socioeconomic orientation. Codified and contractual law, systematized bureaucratization, labour unions, and a number of other institutional developments are a few of the more obvious examples. Of course, the emergence and adoption of liberal democratic political formations greatly enabled this process. Infused within these aspects of discourse are ontological and epistemological beliefs. Productivism is a secular discourse, one in which a subject/object distinction is important in the development of an instrumental rationality regarding the environment and the maintenance of a privileged position for humankind. The stranglehold that Western science has on epistemology reinforces this world view and legitimizes the dominant position of Western thought and practice. It is neither possible nor necessary to exhaust the content or totalitarian character of productivist discourse. It is the air we breathe. It is the blood in our veins. Its boundaries are in constant flux, even if we do have a general sense of what is included and what is not. This flux is a function of the constant struggle with challenges to the hegemony of productivism. The ecological critique is one such challenge and is explored here through green consumerism as one particular manifestation. 'Environmental' refers to the movement in general, from the most opportunistic to the most radical, or to anywhere along that continuum. 'Green' will be used in all its popular fuzziness. The determination of authenticity and other forms of exclusion will be avoided. I am interested in how people signify themselves to be in the community of greens. 'Ecological' will primarily refer to the radical positions, although I would not want to homogenize these groups. They include, for example, many ecological scientists and professionals of all disciplines, ecosocialists, some eco-feminists, powerful lobby groups, such as Green-

12 The Myth of Green Marketing peace and Friends of the Earth, communalists, hippies, and New Age witches. What they share is a belief that radical, fundamental change is essential for long-term ecological sustainability. Some slippage, of course, will be unavoidable, but context should clarify any ambiguities. Ambiguities, however, are what this work is primarily about. The scope of my research is specific, and it is not my intention to make arguments that have already been made. Explorations into the history of capitalism, consumerism, and advertising will be selective. I am interested in relations between things. While this intervention is not precisely about the environmental movement, specific contextualized criticisms are made of activists and theorists within that community. However, there is no thorough catalogue of green ideas here. Nor have I confined myself to the 'ecological crisis/ in any narrow sense of the phrase. I am not even sure if we are on the edge of the Apocalypse, but certainly the environmental crisis does enjoy an active narrative existence. This work is about that 'narrative substance/ and takes as its political terrain the symbolic realm. It is about a discursive reality, and I do not propose to provide a transparent description of events. Consumerism generally, and green consumerism particularly, are underresearched areas in environmental political theory. There are a number of angles from which the topic may be approached, and I have questions to ask. Given that green consumerism is in reality a minor issue, how can we explain its popularity? How can it be perceived as meaningful in our historical moment? Why is it possible to believe its promises? I offer one way of thinking about these questions. Here is not 'true' information, collected to replace 'wrong' information, but a contribution to an ongoing conversation about the environment. I am not revealing truth; I am constructing a heuristic synthesis. It has the purpose of opening up research about green consumerism by approaching it primarily from a cultural perspective rather than an exclusively economic or moral perspective. Because it is impossible to disaggregate the human world, culture is inextricably bound up with political, social, and economic ideas and practices. Consequently, my primary goal is to illustrate the necessity of interdisciplinary (as distinct from single- or multidisciplinary) research in our attempts to understand events in the world. Given this theoretical position, it is useful to remember that important aspects of productivist discourse, such as science and technology, are not understood here in a simple or purely material way. Nor do I intend to suggest that science has been the sole enabling factor in the long production and maintenance of the productivist ethic. Obviously, it has

Introduction 13 been the source of a large number of beneficial as well as destructive consequences. After all, recent developments in science and technology have allowed the present environmental critique to be so devastating and far reaching. At the same time, we are not all natural scientists, and our purchase on those complex, esoteric fields of study is not that of practitioners themselves. In The Science Gap: Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the Reality of Science, Milton Rothman discusses many misconceptions and stereotypes held by non-scientists. Some believe the scientist to be 'brilliant': 'He knows secrets of nature that are hidden from the masses/ Others prefer the image of the 'mad scientist/ or the 'nerd' who 'wants nothing but to be left alone with his computer.' Rothman also discusses the 'delusions' of scientists themselves. For example, he addresses the issue of objectivity and draws points from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Rothman 1992,11-15,162-77). From the theoretical perspective presented here, 'science' is all these things. Indeed, one can hold different and conflicting beliefs regarding the natural sciences and scientists at the same time. Any question of whether science is 'good' or 'bad' makes no sense in the context of this particular argument. One final word regarding scope. I am not making an argument on behalf of green consumerism here. It is one tiny component in the productivist cosmos. My concern is with a growth and expansionistic subtext that is so insidiously infused into the very essence of what we believe it means to be human that it is invisible even to many of capitalism's most articulate critics. Because we believe that to be human is to be a thinker, a maker of things, a being of evolutionary certainty, one may argue that productivism is our ontology. In other words, I am not looking at how green consumerism can make change; I am asking why it does not. Multiple interpretations of events are possible. Depending on which discursive lens they are read through, different explanations are credible to individuals in different theoretical contexts. We understand the world from a certain set of assumptions, and one assumption I am making is that consuming is a meaningful act. Another assumption is that because it overlaps in a number of discourses, a purchase must have meaning in each of those areas. For example, what gives consuming its economic meaning is its role as a dynamic component in an expansionistic economic model that promises satisfaction and success through material abundance. Within a radical ecological world view, however, consumption is destructive and wasteful of finite resources. There are

14 The Myth of Green Marketing cultural, economic, social, and political aspects to each of these disparate interpretations. Consequently, it is useful to consider theoretical approaches that allow for simultaneous readings. Our intellectual context in the 19905 includes non-essentialist theoretical perspectives that encourage us to consider how and why apparent essences became established and sedimented. As well, recent scholarship on the political theory of Antonio Gramsci and the concept of hegemony has led to some inspiring theoretical advancements that facilitate interdisciplinary research and provide a framework for understanding relationships among multiple coexisting factors. In the first chapter I discuss these theoretical issues as they relate to the ideas and arguments being made here. In chapter 2 the re-signification of 'consume' in the eighteenth century is considered, from connotations of depletion and destruction to associations of wealth generation and increased status. I introduce the environmental debate in the third chapter and discuss how various factions of the green movement have approached the issue of consumerism. In chapter 4 I focus more specifically on the green-consumerism debate. In chapter 5 I engage theory developed in the text with substantive examples.

1 Theoretical Considerations

The analysis proposed here is based on a synthesis of three groups of ideas: the concept of hegemony, modern developments in narrative theory, and an anthropological notion of social myth. Each one of these areas, of course, has produced innumerable volumes and much debate, but they are not necessarily discrete fields of study. Each impinges on the other. Myth generation, I argue, is a functional aspect of hegemony and it is the structure of narrative that largely shapes the character of myth. Each aspect will be discussed as it relates to the argument being made here. Selected aspects of recent narrative theory are incorporated in this argument for several reasons. One is that some authors write of the text as a plastic environment where meaning is contingent. They theorize this condition and how the reader uses it to make sense of a text. Related to this aspect is an understanding of how texts move in a linear direction towards successful completion. Both the forward direction of movement and the necessity of resolution are important here: an individual can intersect a myth anywhere along its story-line and will always move to the resolution, without confusion, because of the necessary direction of narrative. Myths, being stories, consequently are subject to this dynamic. To conceptualize green consumerism as a myth is also useful because of the social importance of myths as conduits of norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs across generations. Although it may or may not have an impact on the circulation of toxins through the ecosystem, green consumerism has certainly been appropriated into the front line of campaigns concerned with promoting ever more and varied consumption, as well as into those directed at

16 The Myth of Green Marketing questioning and reducing consumption per se. But first let us consider hegemony. Hegemony Although Antonio Gramsci credited Lenin with the concept, subsequent writers associate the term 'hegemony' with Gramsci himself. So much has been written in the last fifteen years or so regarding Gramsci's work that one observer has called this corpus the Gramsci industry. Concomitant with the increased popularity of Gramsci's political theory has been a revival of the political. This rehabilitation of the political has involved the de-centring of economics and the theorizing of society in a less deterministic and less essentialist way (Mouffe 1979, 182). Gramsci's conceptualization of hegemony points in this direction. Although Gramsci was inconsistent in his usage of the term, hegemony can be defined as the achievement of intellectual, moral, and political leadership through the consensual articulation of popular groups. In other words, hegemony is an activity, not a static formation. It is a process of alliancebuilding and accommodation: those who would achieve dominance must attract associates by genuinely adopting the interests of others (Gramsci 1971, 57). It is a federating relationship, not a homogenizing one. As T.J. Jackson Lears points out, however, it is never entirely successful. The constant negotiation and readjustment in this dynamic illustrates the interrelationship of agency and structure; that is, people live in a tension between individual choice and social norm (Lears 1985, 570-3)For this reason the quality of leadership is very important. Individuals have some choice in their interpretation of events, but when multiple meanings are available, a credible and authoritative voice can tip the interpretive scale. As we shall see in more detail below, in the early 19905 particularly there were several different voices competing for the ear of the thoughtful consumer, each one convincingly identifying the problem, offering an explanation, and guaranteeing a solution. Even when they reverse decisions in mid-stream, as McDonald's did with its packaging, those who know how to manipulate social, political, and cultural norms can still influence the decisions of their victims. This text will not be a Gramscian reading of environmental politics. There are, however, three aspects of his theory of hegemony I wish to evoke. First, consider the conceptual shape of the political. Then, borrowing from Gramsci's notion of 'historical bloc/ we can usefully describe

Theoretical Considerations 17 human society as a matrix of interweaving discourses. This is a constantly dynamic formation, in which leadership plays an important role. 'Structures and superstructures form an "historical bloc/' That is to say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production ... [There is a] necessary reciprocity between structure and superstructure, a reciprocity which is nothing other than the real dialectical process' (Gramsci 1971, 366). These words describe the complex way in which Gramsci perceived and theorized the political. The matrix I am referring to is what he terms the 'historical bloc/ 'Ensemble' acknowledges the existence of autonomous different interests. It disaggregates previously homogeneous Marxist categories, such as working class. 'Ensemble' is non-hierarchical in spirit; it encourages one to visualize human society on a horizontal plane. In other words, there is no obvious and consistent a priori direction of power in society. Moreover, power may manifest itself in ways outside preconceived norms. Thinking of the political as non-hierarchical blurs the boundaries of the political. One is more open to examining communities of interest, rather than assuming a priori that one homogenized group controls a hostile, homogenized Other in a one-way power grip. Do they cooperate, manipulate, negotiate, or dominate each other? Or do they use a combination of strategies to promote their own interests and vision of the Good? Productivist hegemony, for example, includes even different political and economic ideologies. The choice of 'ensemble' also legitimizes a wide range of different interests as credible political actors. It opens the door to acknowledging more non-traditional political actors and to disaggregating collective categories. Indeed, I argue that the ordinary and everyday can be sites of political contestation. For our purposes here, they would include the shop, the home, the laundromat, the gas station, the restaurant, and so on. The first point I want to make about hegemony, then, is that the concepts of 'historical bloc' and 'ensemble' expand the terrain of politics. This aspect of hegemony encourages us to consider the relationships between the elements that make up these formations. How is their apparent coherence actually constituted? One aspect of the way I am constructing the political realm for the present analysis is as a weave, rather than as a homogenization of discourses. I also want to follow Gramsci in emphasizing the dense complexity of factors involved in the maintenance of or challenge to the

i8 The Myth of Green Marketing historical bloc. Like circumstantial evidence, the aggregation and articulation of minor incidents and activities, such as seemingly unrelated texts, images, and vocabularies, form part of the context within which one interpretation is enabled over another interpretation. Language, reputed to be a transparent conduit of information is part of a hegemonic matrix. When companies promote less environmentally damaging products, they may appear to be making ecologically responsible statements. However, they are still promoting increased consumption. They continue to speak the language of productivist hegemony, thereby legitimizing and reinforcing its tenure. As we see in the above quotation, for Gramsci there are two ensembles, divided into structure and superstructure (roughly, economics and ideology/society). They are joined by a 'necessary reciprocity/ Although he is sensitive to the compound character of social and political formations, Gramsci still does separate these factors along the traditional Marxist divide. The relationship between them, however, is not clear in his work, and sometimes in his text one is a 'reflection' of the other, which would suggest a passive co-existence of similar entities. The two ensembles also may engage in 'reciprocity/ which is by definition a mutual exchange. This is different from the notion of reflection in that reciprocity as a concept allows for negotiation. No one component dominates and shapes the others. In short, some people believe economics is the bottom line of human society and that everything else flows from it. While still of this basic Marxist belief, Gramsci attached much more importance to the social and cultural realms. I push this emphasis further, as do others, and visualize society as a weave with no one component (such as economics) more fundamental than another. This point is important for thinking about environmental marketing, because I am arguing that not only is consumption an aspect of the economy; it is also an aspect of culture. Gramsci refers to the relationship between the structural ensemble (economics) and the superstructural ensemble as 'the real dialectical process/ meaning that there is an interrelationship between economics and ideology/society. Elsewhere he refers to historical bloc as the 'unity of opposites and distincts' (1971, 137). Whether Socratic, Hegelian, or Marxist, the dialectic is still fundamentally a theory about the contradiction of poles. What is Gramsci suggesting here? Exactly how does he perceive the relationship between the ensembles? This relationship is even more ambiguous when we see he refers to relations within the economic or societal ensembles themselves as 'contradictory and discor-

Theoretical Considerations 19 dant/ In this passage he seems to be saying two things: first, that relations between actors in a political field are compatible and negotiable; and second, that they are hostile and contradictory. This is an important distinction when it comes to devising strategies for social change, leading to either negotiation or revolution. Perhaps this particular confusion around the concepts of hegemony and historical bloc in Gramsci stems from his wanting it both ways. He wants to be true to Marxist principles and categories, such as class struggle. At the same time he clearly needs to theorize a much more complicated social dynamic. For the purposes of active politics, important components, such as the nature of leadership and the role of intellectuals, must be accounted for. The fact that attitudes, behaviour, and loyalties cannot be absolutely determined by class requires that activists be sensitive, flexible, and pragmatic, as well as ideologically secure. Gramsci imagines the construction of a democratic socialism capable of avoiding the authoritarian pitfalls of democratic centralism (Stalin's Soviet Union). Perhaps there is no confusion. The political terrain need not be couched as struggle or negotiation. As Gramsci himself notes, it is both, or either, depending on the exigencies of the moment. This is not simply democratic Machiavellianism. What Gramsci makes clear is that the negotiations and articulations that go on in the hegemonic process require a sincere adjustment on the part of those attempting to establish a counter-hegemony (not what Machiavelli had in mind for the Prince). The new historical bloc being formed is more an amalgamation of sympathetic (but not identical) groups than it is a homogenization or an annihilation. The issue of green consumerism illustrates this. As we shall see below, some environmentalists believe that free-market entrepreneurialism is capable of having a significant impact on ecological concerns. At the same time, a number of career capitalists genuinely recognize that there is a significant ecological crisis developing, and they sincerely want their companies and industries to be part of the solution (and if sales figures rise, all the better). These actors do not merely 'reflect7 the beliefs of business, industry, and government, and they are more than just a community of interests. All these independent organizations and individuals are relatively autonomous, but they are related as components of productivism. Their concern for the environment articulates them on this issue, but it does not homogenize them into a shapeless and predictable ideological pudding.

20 The Myth of Green Marketing I shall not follow Gramsci's separation of the political into two ensembles. Furthermore, I would argue that imagining the economy as the centre of a human universe devalues the contribution of other important factors and distorts the relative autonomy of agents and of other discourses. The economistic legacy of Marxism reveals itself here. But the choice need not be either to privilege the economy or to eliminate it. Indeed, a conceptualization of human community as a matrix of interweaving discourses allows one not only to reinstate the economy, but to make some attempt at showing how it functions in a more complicated way. The notions of hegemony and historical bloc are of this spirit. The conceptualization of the social, political, and economic realms as matrix is important for the argument being made here because it helps us to understand the apparent cohesion of the social and to explain, in part, how we make sense of new phenomena. The process will become clearer when we examine how green consumerism can make sense against the force of scientific evidence by resonating with this matrix. There is a second point I want to draw out of the concept of hegemony. Because different groups are trying either to maintain hegemony or to destabilize the existing structures in order to form a challenging hegemony, the existing historical bloc (productivism) is constantly in a state of instability (Gramsci 1971,170). Those who rule must do so with consent and force. This is an ongoing activity. Those who want to perpetuate the status quo and those who want to affect social change are engaged in a 'war of position/ Gramsci writes, In politics, the siege is a reciprocal one, despite appearances, and the mere fact that the ruler has to muster all his resources demonstrates how seriously he takes his adversary/ Because political opponents do consider their antagonists competent, this besiegement is of the mind. The ideological struggle must present a coherent world view (Gramsci 1971, 239, 324). This is the role of common sense: 'Common sense is the site on which the dominant ideology is constructed, but it is also the site for the resistance to that ideology' (Simon 1991, 26, 65). Raymond Williams adds that hegemony is so totalizing that it 'even constitutes the substance and limit for common sense for most people under its sway/ It is the reality of social experience for most people. (Williams 1980, 37). Oppositional movements are trying to destabilize this coherence and create a different understanding, an alternative meaning. A competing vision is a 'counter-hegemony' and has as its purpose the replacement of the existing hegemony. This pro-active notion of ideology, which is part of hegemony, leads

Theoretical Considerations 21 us away from a conceptualization of the individual as passive victim. Furthermore, a theoretical approach that does not privilege any one aspect as a foundation of all else forces us to examine how political, social, and ideological norms are constituted, without simply saying they reflect the economic. Williams writes, It is in just this recognition of the wholeness of the process that the concept of "hegemony" goes beyond "ideology"' (1977, 108-9). Before Foucault, and in spite of his own economism, Gramsci's concept of hegemony was a major step in this direction. In his emphasis on the diffusion of power relations within civil society he reminds us that the political is a place of negotiation, seduction, argumentation, articulation, and adaptation, as well as coercion. In other words, the maintenance of productivist hegemony relies on much more than capitalist economic successes. Social structures, political policy, and everyday cultural norms are crucial components of its dynamic matrix. The negotiable aspect of the social is important for the present argument concerning green consumerism. The consumer is not the mindless puppet of capital, battered into one-dimensionality, as Herbert Marcuse suggested. Choosing what one perceives to be environmentally benign (or at least less damaging) products is a conscious decision. It is not simply an issue of price, and it requires some degree of autonomy. When one is standing in the shop and faced with the choice between buying a plastic trash bag that claims to be environmentally safe or one that does not, what conditions that decision? This moment of 'undecidability' itself is a site of political struggle, as important as any other in the field of environmental politics, because each discrete environmentally conditioned purchase calls into question the credibility and legitimacy of the whole discourse of productivism. When customers choose the Hefty trash bag (although it is more expensive) because Mobil Chemicals, its producer, claims the bag is degradable, shoppers know they are making a statement about their concern for the environment. Although most cannot explain all the chemical and biological connections that flow from their choice, they perceive that there is a real connection. Otherwise, why make this choice? Green consumerism is an ambiguous myth. Not only does it manifest itself in different ways, but it lends itself to positive and negative interpretations. Another aspect of this ambiguity is that although the conscious purchase of a perceived environmentally benign product challenges productivist logics, in a less generous interpretation, it is still an act of consumerism and therefore perpetuates productivism. More

22 The Myth of Green Marketing specifically, the perception of the act differs according to which meaning system it is understood within. Environmentalists read it in both ways. If IBM chooses to dominate an advertisement for databases with a huge colour photo of a pristine lake surrounded by trees, it is not because there is any obvious connection between the photo and the product. An individual looking to purchase a computer-related product may understand from this advertisement that IBM is not only technologically sophisticated, but also responsible and pro-active in its commitment to harmony in the natural environment. This is a likely reading within a belief matrix containing the assumptions that capitalist economics (the market) will ensure a life of balance in all things, liberal ethics will protect all living creatures, and a productivist premise that suggests that these promises can be fulfilled in the name of progress and development. Considering the IBM advertisement from an alternative belief matrix, however, could result in a radically different reading. Such an interpretation might identify capitalist economics as the engine and vehicle of ecological destruction. These same liberal ethics could be accused of offering a distorted view of the Earth's ecosystem by constructing it as a hierarchy in which humans are at the top. In this reading, progress and development are the agents of Apocalypse, not the net servers for Nirvana. Which reading consumers will make depends upon which belief matrix they are in. At any given time, the individual is situated within a number of coexisting discourses, each one competing for the ear of the subject. Correspondingly, the consumer of the early 19905 was faced with considerable confusion amid the claims of marketers and environmentalists. Thus, we can see that the War of Position is waged even at the level of the ordinary, that which is politically invisible. Here is where leadership and authoritative voice are vital. Whom to believe? Life as the ordinary citizen experiences it in the affluent North generally is good. This state conforms to expansionist promises and therefore reinforces the hegemony of productivism. On the other hand, powerful governments take ecological scientists seriously and hold major international conferences to appease them. Ecological shepherds appear morally pure and without self-interest. Consequently, there are a number of credible and convincing (even if contradictory) voices in this struggle for dominance as the shopper grazes the supermarket shelves, reading labels and trying to sort through the cacophony in her head. I am not asking the innocent question: Does green consumerism work or not? It likely has a different impact on different people. If green con-

Theoretical Considerations 23 sumerism did 'work' in the sense that it successfully erased doubts regarding the culture of consumption in the minds of ordinary people, there would be no debate. The issue would be invisible. But individuals with no particular ecological interests have indicated that they believe the physical environment is being abused and burdened inadvertently by humans simply in the going about of their everyday lives. If it were not so, there would not be conflicting voices in the consumer's head. Such cracks in the smooth veneer of predictability illustrate that the hegemony of productivist discourse is under stress, because consumer doubts resonate with principles of productivist discourse through association and logical necessity. These tenets are closely interwoven and are interdependent. They bring together and give form to an otherwise nebulous, unrelated set of propositions and facts. Consequently, in putting any particle of that system into question, consumer doubt makes that coherence wobble, if ever so slightly. Clearly, then, as this argument is concerned with the interstices between doubt and certainty, there will be no rewarding denouement and resolution of that ambiguity. The myth of green consumerism both disrupts and sutures. This confusion reveals a site of political struggle, which features two major battles. One is between unreformed expansionists and principled (as opposed to opportunist) environmentalists. The second is a disagreement within the environmental movement itself, which exposes some quite polarized certainties. I am arguing two points in relation to the moment of consumer decision. The first is about decision-making. In buying the environmentally safer product one is making sense of the world, because the act domesticates that which is threatening and unfamiliar by attaching it to what is comprehensible. In a sense, one takes the esoteric and makes common sense out of it. This is likely not a conscious thought, but the discourses that structure identity and understanding of our relationship to the world are always latent. Not just any arbitrary thought is possible. Hence, we are always making sense of the world within certain boundaries of thought. Dominant discourses for the average Western consumer would be capitalist in economics, liberal democratic in politics, and Judeo-Christian in social discourse. These discourses, however, are plastic in character. Consequently, we all do not make the exact same sense from the same stimuli. Because they are necessarily reductive, I condense the discourses within which we understand the world into three general categories: as economic, political, and social/cultural. These discourses are not discrete but are interrelated and include com-

24 The Myth of Green Marketing mon ideological assumptions, such as a concept of human nature, a value system, ontological and epistemological beliefs, and presumptions about the common good and one's relationship to it. As we shall see, the narratives of social myths help to connect these discourses in sensible matrices and thereby maintain their authority and the productivist ethic. I am suggesting that green consumerism is one such myth. It prevents a serious rupture in productivist discourse by making sense of the ecological critique. It does so by weaving existing discourses together in a sympathetic way rather than a critical way. This sympathetic reading is not too difficult to achieve because it is reinforced by existing knowledge, whereas for radical ecology to secure a toehold in modern Western consciousness, it has to fight 250 years of history. Consequently, when consumers contemplate the degradable trash bag versus the nondegradable trash bag, they may take the radical choice of not making a purchase, but it is unlikely. Throughout this time expansionistic economics, anthropocentric politics and corresponding ideological beliefs have been condensed, legitimized, and constantly reinforced. In short, by identifying the ecological crisis as a problem in type of consumption rather than in consumption per se the crucial radical critique of modern industrial society is effectively sidestepped and productivist discourse maintains its coherence. This is, in the language of Laclau and Mouffe, the hegemonic suture. Writing about this dynamism of hegemony, Raymond Williams notes that the agents are conscious and reflective. Hegemony, he continues, is actively created, maintained, and reproduced by real individuals. This complexity must be continually 'renewed, recreated and defended' (1980, 38; 1977,112). Laclau and Mouffe pick up from Gramsci and theorize a non-essentialist hegemony. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy they define politics as 'a practice of creation, reproduction and transformation of social relations/ Thus, following from Gramsci, the authors also conceive of social formations as constituted, not as found. This approach centres around 'the definition and articulation of social relations in a field criss-crossed with antagonisms/ Articulation is defined as 'any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice/ In other words, social identities and subjectivity are not fixed a priori and have no essence. They must be actively established, although they always remain vulnerable to subversion because of antagonism, the internal limit that always prevents purity. It is discourse that suggests unity. This is the source of

Theoretical Considerations 25 apparent cohesion and naturalness of social formation (Laclau and Mouffe 1985,153,105,125, 96; Laclau 1990, 242). Productivism, then, so permeates every breath of our lives that it feels natural. Entrepreneurial expansionism, with its comforting notions of progress and development, seems like the inevitable consequence of human intellect and creativity. But it was not inevitable. Other choices could have been made and can still be made. Alternative economic ideas, political ideals, social systems, and cultural beliefs have always been part of human debate. The historical moment is such that these antagonisms now are being more disruptive to productivist discourse. Alternative values and ways of living work like water frozen in the fissures of a rock. What once seemed so solid, sure, and absolute is beginning to destabilize, revealing cracks that, in fact, have always been there. Productivist hegemony, like aggregate rock, always remains open to subversion because of its constructed and hence contingent character. People are beginning to ask questions about the environment. If we follow Laclau and Mouffe, then, the social is irreducible to any finite base or fundamental essence. Productivist hegemony is not inevitable, natural, or passive, but the consequence of 250 years of negotiation and struggle. Because meanings are not timeless essences, we experience the 'open and politically negotiable character of every identity/ Fixity must be charted, not assumed. That is, we must analyse how meanings become fixed in one place but not in another in any given context, rather than assume a meaning has timeless essential quality. Consequently, an apparently fixed meaning cannot serve as a basis for political explanation but itself must be explained. As a further complication, Laclau and Mouffe emphasize the proliferation of political spaces within advanced Western capitalism. This broadening out of the political terrain means that '[i]n a given social formation there can be a variety of hegemonic nodal points' (Laclau and Mouffe 1985,104,111,138-9). A nodal point is a point where an attempt is made to fix meaning. By historically contextualizing its conditions of emergence, we can understand why, under certain changing conditions, the security of a nodal point's 'truth' comes under stress, consequently showing the actual unstable and contingent nature of the discourse it attempts to help solidify (Laclau and Mouffe 1985,112,117). 'Consume/ I would argue, is one such nodal point. Part of the political purpose of my argument is to undermine and destabilize the truthfulness of this term by exploring some important aspects of its emergence. The conceptualization of 'con-

26 The Myth of Green Marketing sume' was the subject of a complicated political struggle in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This subject will be explored in fuller detail in chapter 2. In our time, what it means to consume has become once again a site of political struggle as competing discourses target it as a key point of fixity. If we follow Laclau and Mouffe, the social is irreducible to any finite base or fundamental essence. Without a hierarchic formation, we are more inclined to examine the interrelations between components within a discourse. It is in these interstices that social logics operate. The relationships are neither necessary nor historically consistent, but are negotiated and renegotiated to incorporate or marginalize challenges to apparent unity. Twenty years ago IBM, for instance, would not have promoted itself with images of pristine lakes. The historical context has changed to the point where such tactics do not seem absurd. We shall take a closer look at this issue later. For several reasons, the modern notion of hegemony is not structuralfunctionalism under a different name. Hegemony is not about structures as given a priori, but is about how apparently super hard structures are actively produced. Within hegemonic theory, challenges to cohesion are not simply subsumed but have an effect on the hegemonic formation / historical bloc itself. More to the point, when environmental critiques barraged the smug veneer of productivist complacency, political, social, and economic responses emerged to reassure us that productivism would put all to right, as it always had. Massive recycling schemes have been developed in major cities. Propane, chemical conversion, and electrical vehicles are very close to production, and governmental environmental policy has been enacted. On the one hand, investing effort and resources to clean up (and cover up) the dirty legacy of industrialization seems to be so much cynical damage control. But we still are not (at a popular level) questioning the expansionist ethic of productivism. On the other hand, these clean-up exercises have had a very real effect on some of the ugly parts of productivism. To maintain productivist dominance, there must be constant hegemonic activity that takes on in a real way (according to Gramsci) the concerns of groups within the hegemonic formation. Green consumerism performs this task well, because it speaks to concerned subjects of productivist discourse and it provides a way forward for beleaguered industries. As Raymond Williams notes, a lived hegemony is always process/ It is always having to accommodate change, to renew, and to defend itself. It is 'continually resisted, limited, altered [and] challenged'

Theoretical Considerations 27 (Williams 1977, 112). This is not just cooptation by bourgeois ideology. The discourse of productivism is in constant mutation, and these contributions become a real part of a new, improved productivism. In short, hegemony is a dynamic way of thinking the social, which takes contingency and instability as the norm, rather than the exception. It is in spirit quite the opposite of structural-functionalism, even if it may share its concern with dynamism and the nature of social structures. Before moving on to consider the concept of myth, let us briefly note the importance of leadership, which, as we shall see in chapter 5 is a principle frequently invoked by green marketing strategists. As Bates notes, paraphrasing Gramsci, 'Civil society is the marketplace of ideas where intellectuals enter as "salesmen" of contending cultures' (1975, 353). But as we have seen, different legitimate discourses are valid to an individual at the same time. Furthermore, it is discourse that legitimizes leadership; it is the leader who acts as the interface between the discourse and the subject. Or, speaking metaphorically, if discourses are the warp and woof of a social weave, leaders are the shuttles. In this active sense they are frequently the agents of myth. Because many different leaders speak convincingly to us from within equally credible discourses, it is possible to hold contradictory opinions at the same time. Indeed, green consumerism as a hegemonic social myth trades on this possibility. Its narrative naturalizes the coexistence of competing beliefs. For example, the realization that we may well face a serious ecological catastrophe if we continue our present rate of resource reduction can be held at the same time as we maintain a firm commitment to expansionistic economic models. This conceptualization of the subject makes it clear that when an individual comes to a point of having to make a decision where one set of credible discourses and authoritative leaders clashes with another, it is not always possible to predict the outcome. Who will influence the consumer? All people may speak, but only some will be heard. It is important to remember that Gramsci's concept of leadership is not a narrow political science definition. Likewise, his idea of intellectual includes doctors, teachers, priests, judges, lawyers, writers, politicians, artists, philosophers, journalists, broadcasters, technicians, managers, civil servants, and so forth (Bocock 1986, 36). Unlike Gramsci, in the age of advanced capitalism I would want to expand the notion of leader beyond the individual. Important for the argument being made here regarding green consumerism, the leader7 (at least in public relations terms) can be a corporate identity, such as Mobil Chemicals,

28 The Myth of Green Marketing McDonald's, Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth. Gramsci's elites are supposedly always in a relationship of reciprocity with their constituents. The process of development is tied to a dialectic between the intellectuals and the masses/ Each intellectual leap forward is tied to a corresponding movement on the part of the masses 'who raise themselves to a higher level of culture' (Gramsci 1971, 323). This view is somewhat optimistic. According to many who write about consumerism, most people are trapped by their own herd instincts in obedience to advertisers. At the same time, it seems that the captains of capitalism feel compelled to reassure shoppers that they are responding to the demands of their customers. Thus, modern business leadership walks a tightrope between leading and serving. But as we shall see, in the example of Mobil Chemicals, sometimes the goats can turn on the goatherd. Whatever their nominal definition - leaders, intellectuals, elites - and whatever their rhetoric, these people are powerful and they function in the interest of particular discourses. Those who promote green consumerism, however, form a cross-section in their political class and economic position. It is not enough simply to repeat leftist cliches about the self-aggrandizing, immoral nature of capitalists. Gramsci himself writes, It should be noted that the entrepreneur ... represents a higher level of elaboration already characterised by a certain directive and technical (i.e., intellectual) capacity ... He must be an organiser of masses of men; he must be an organiser of the 'confidence' of investors in his business; of the customers for his product' (1971, 5). It is an aspect of my argument that productivist discourse is being perpetuated by many factions of the environmental movement at the same time as they are being critical of productivism. Leadership, as Gramsci reminds us, is a moral position. Leading is not instrumental manipulation, but an act of education and organization; after all, hegemony relies on consensual articulation, which requires the moral integrity and intellectual ability to convince disparate groups that they do share interests and goals. The crucial position of trust cannot be over-emphasized, and it is clearly attached to a constructed notion of the common good. Discourses legitimize leaders, but that legitimacy has an ethical imperative, which at least as much as political clout, financial assets, and opportunistic manipulation, gives a leader his or her authority. A third point is illustrated by the vocabulary in the last quote from Gramsci. 'Higher level of elaboration,' 'directive and technical (i.e.,

Theoretical Considerations 29 intellectual) capacity/ and 'organizer' all suggest that the leader must have superior knowledge, in terms of both quality and quantity. The fact that he or she must be a locus of legitimate knowledge is bound up with the point made above regarding the ethical nature of the role. A leader/intellectual is an authoritative agent of a discourse; she or he is deeply embedded in its truths and imperatives. Because science is the epistemological ground of modern Western culture, those who speak in its name have an edge on credibility over other voices. This advantage may not be enough, however, as was the case with ecological scientists in the 19608. They can still be marginalized or discredited. It is their connection with powerful elite sectors, such as technology, industry, or government, that enhances their credibility as educators and holders of important forms of knowledge - hence their leadership status. It does not necessarily follow that it is impossible for grass-roots organizers to develop powerful organizations - Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are examples of those who have done so - it simply is extremely difficult. '[A]n older order cannot be made to vanish simply by pointing out its evils, any more than a new order can be brought into existence by promoting its virtues. A social order, no matter how exploitative, cannot be understood simply as a conspiracy of wicked rulers' (Bates 1975, 365). Put all these aspects of leadership together in the terrain of environmental politics, and it means that leadership that evokes the legitimization of a large number of historically authoritative discourses, such as liberal democratic, expansionist economic, and techno-scientific, will speak with a voice comfortingly pure and natural. The sense of their statements will carry the cognitive force of a near absoluteness so compelling that its contingent nature will be invisible even to many of its harshest critics. Myth As these kinds of manoeuvres take place on the symbolic plane, mythmaking is one way of framing that struggle. Not only are myths riddled with symbolic meaning, but they come in the form of stories. Both aspects are important components of green consumerist advertising. Later, we shall consider an advertisement for Shell Chemicals. Its simple written message and striking image reach out not only to symbolic conventions, such as light as knowledge, but also to stories of empire and exotic lands. The knowledge is a metaphysical awareness of God with

30 The Myth of Green Marketing all its associations of morality, goodness, and virtue. But this is so only because we know the story. Even those who think God represents everything that is evil, violent, and ugly in this world still know that light means enlightenment as a bonding with spiritual goodness, In the same way, green consumer advertisements make sense because they lead comfortably into a story that we already know. Ivan Strenski, who has written on the works of Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Cassirer, and Eliade, emphasizes the plastic and non-essential nature of myth (1987, 2-11). Myth maintains a conceptual flexibility unavailable to a term like ideology, which has suffered from too much false precision. Furthermore, an anthropological approach to myth avoids connotations of artificiality or facade. I am using myth here as a positive social construction, not as a false consciousness. This point is important, because I am asking why green consumerism makes sense to many people. Why does it seem reasonable? I am not concerned with the truth of the myth's story. I am curious as to its cultural power. How do people become interpolated by it when they have been oblivious to years of ecologists' warnings? A myth is a story, and like most stories it has a resolution and a message. Many cultures have historically used this device to transmit social wisdom through generations. Green consumerism functions in this way, perpetuating the ethic of productivist expansionism during a historical moment when productivism is under threat from the modern environmental movement. As we shall see, productivist discourse subsumes criticism into its own logic in much the same way that myths have always appropriated current events to reinforce the timelessness of their principles. Myths help to maintain a hegemonic system by supporting central belief structures. A distinctive feature of myth is its structure as a story. The narrative begins but is prevented from running smoothly to its teleological end by a disruption. The problem and cause are identified; a solution is proposed. Its application results in a resolution of the rupture, whereby the story ends. In this case, the original narrative is productivist discourse. It promises an abundant economy, democratic political organization, and a developed society. In other words, productivism is the source of the good life. It is the history of affluence; it is the future of opulence. Then, disruption intersects this idyllic story. Global warming, holes in the ozone, resource depletion, toxic waste production, and plain old garbage crash like conceptual asteroids into the coherent cosmos of productivist discourse. Cracks start to form. Questions are asked. There are many responses to this challenge to produc-

Theoretical Considerations 31 tivist hegemony. One reaction, at the narrative level, is the emergence of the 'myth of green consumerism/ Never actually stated, but always implied, is the accusation that we dirty, gluttonous consumers are largely to blame for the ecological crisis. We may achieve confession, retribution, and forgiveness (from 'Nature') if we change our consumption habits (just as long as we do not question consumption per se). Avoiding Apocalypse, we are saved by once again conforming to the analysis and advice of productivism's sophists. Life goes on; productivism is somewhat changed by its intersection with new ecologism, and we subjects have again demonstrated our faith in, and commitment to, the discourse of productivism. As argued in the section on narrative, below, once an individual intersects with a myth, she is caught up in a progressive dynamic that leads inevitably towards resolution. Neither ideology nor discourse necessarily moves in this way. In the present case, this means that once the individual engages with the myth of green consumerism through the act of purchase, the satisfaction of crisis resolution is symbolically achieved, even if the actuality is left forever pending. Claude Levi-Strauss believes mythology to be a closed system, with the same elements combining again and again. Myth is a way of preserving history, he posits. But more than being a true record of actual events, he adds, mythic memory is like a language, a code. He compares myth to music and insists we must understand myth as a totality, written stave after stave (Levi-Strauss 1979, 40-5, 9). This notion of repetition and renewal (also central to genre) is common among writers on myth. Hans Blumenberg believes in the continuity of epochs, which was made possible by the 'reoccupation of identical positions/ meaning that the same questions keep dressing themselves up in new myths in each generation. This notion of myth lends itself well to the activity of suturing wounded belief systems. Blumenberg suggests, more specifically, that the modern age has generated secular myths to legitimize modern answers to questions that in an earlier epoch were resolved within a religious realm (Ingram 1990, 2; Blumenberg 1985, xviii). This is much the way I see green consumerism. The question is not new; the myth is. Both Ernst Cassirer and Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy describe myth generation as a reawakening. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy and Roland Barthes also describe myth as a continuous process. I would agree with this point of view. Green consumerism, for instance, is neither unique nor necessarily long term. For Barthes, signifiers (symbols) are constantly being reappropriated and reloaded. He describes myth as a 'neb-

32 The Myth of Green Marketing ulous condensation' which is inherently 'unstable' (Barthes 1972, 119; Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 1990, 246). Myths can emerge and dissolve as their effectiveness wanes. While many producers still offer environmentally benign products, there is not the same demand in the late 19908 for this quality as there was in the later 19805 to early 19905. Richard Slotkin suggests that myths are rooted in actual historical occurrences. Over generations they become abstracted and standardized in both style and function 'until they are reduced to a set of powerfully evocative and resonant "icons'" (Slotkin 1985, 16). Consequently, myths are highly charged symbols by means of which the community and the individual are fused in a single identity. Such strong emotional attachments are not the easy victims of mere rationality. Productivist discourse, which has provided the legitimation for white Northern Europeans to shape the world in their short-term interests at the expense of local and global ecosystems as well as at the expense of large numbers of people in less powerful regions, shares this status as 'evocative and resonant icon.' Through media, such as stories, films, artwork, historical narratives, educational texts, common sense, conversations, literature, popular culture, academic publications, and social myths, the message of the productivist ethic is perpetuated from one generation to the next. The discourse of productivism with its component myths has provided the condition of possibility for a Utopian reading of industrial development and productivist ethics to be privileged over a dystopian reading. From this point of view, myths are the wallpaper of our lives; they are an imperceptible backdrop to apparently autonomous thoughts and actions. They facilitate but do not determine one understanding over another. Myths also smooth out the rough edges of actuality and inform the very substance from which the ordinary is sculpted. Generally, a view of human nature as atomistic, rational, and autonomous has dominated in the modern world. That evolution and progress are believed to characterize the nature of the universe is almost without question. The promises of economic prosperity, political democracy, individual freedom, and social harmony, supposedly implicit in productivism, continue to seduce, even as the tension of paradox continues through environmental crises and increasing Third World invisibility. Green consumerism connects directly to each of these promises and thereby helps to maintain the coherence of their relationship. When an existing hegemonic socio-political formation becomes vulnerable to stress, social myths emerge. They attempt to suture the weak-

Theoretical Considerations 33 ened discourse through exclusion, marginalization, or cooptation of challenges to its coherence and authority. Compared with that of the 19605, for example, the environmental critique of the 19905 has become ever more convincing and effective at the international level. Many of those concerned with erosion of resources and deterioration of the physical environment call for a decrease and qualitative change in popular consumption habits. The economic, political, social, and cultural ramifications, if this demand were to be taken seriously, would rock the expansionist and productivist ethic that permeates and enables the matrix of forces that facilitate our habits of mind and material existence. One of the social myths that has emerged in response to this tension is green consumerism. It functions to appropriate this challenge and reshape the antagonistic element to reinforce, rather than subvert, productivist discourse. The language of this new myth perpetuates the values of progress, evolution, rationality, autonomy, expansionism, and so forth, while at the same time containing and domesticating legitimate challenges from the dystopian side of the productivist paradox. The mind is a tool of understanding; it seeks coherence. Even to find something incomprehensible, nonsensical, irrational, or confusing is to make a certain sense of it. When confronted with a possible lethal breach in one's belief system, it is not unlikely that a desire for order, for the safety of the familiar would incline an individual to reinforce the known rather than entertain the frequent minor, and not so minor, barrages to his or her beliefs. This is the hegemonic role of myth: to suture the wound in our functional complacency. Narrative The social myths we live within are stories, and as such they contain a narrative component. We grow up with narratives from an early age. We are read to as children or told stories. We study them formally through years of schooling. Even those who do not read for pleasure throughout their lives encounter stories through television and other forms of popular culture. Consequently, we learn the conventions of narrative even if we do not intend to do so. We are unwitting subjects of these story norms. For example, many people are dissatisfied with unsettling endings. Or people might say in criticism of a novel or a film, It wasn't going anywhere/ or 'Nothing really ever happened in it.' What do we mean when we say, 'It was boring,' or 1 couldn't follow the plot'? We can make these judgments and understand the judgments of

34 The Myth of Green Marketing others only because we have expectations shaped by knowledge of the conventions of narrative. If a film were to break before the end, or if the last chapter of a novel were missing, we would be able to 'write' our own ending, because we know the logics of stories. I am making a parallel argument here. The myth of green consumerism supplies components that we, as narrativizing creatures, arrange into a story that helps us overlook the cracks in productivist hegemony. This is not, for most people, a conscious activity. The happy ending to the environmental crisis implied by green marketers makes no ecological sense. It is important, then, that the story is never explicitly narrated: the consumer must be guided along a story path of her own making. Productivist discourse is a story in which scientific and technological knowledge promise a happy ending to the problems of poverty, disease, and tyranny. The affluent West holds up itself and its history as both the example and the way. The ecological crisis reveals the constructed and contingent character of productivism, which makes room for doubt, confusion, and suspicion regarding the smug promises of productivist discourse. When consumers face a shelf of plastic garbage bags in the supermarket, confusion may be in the back of their minds. Other considerations besides price, size, and bag strength are possibly making it difficult to make a decision. Ecologists say plastic is a problem. They say that throwing things away is a problem. Garbage dumps are filling up. Consuming is bad. For many people, at the turn of the decade, these issues were a consideration. They formed a popular and relentless discourse in the late 19808 and early 19905 and did make many people question the apparent unshakability of productivist expansionism. From this gap in productivist hegemony emerged the social myth of green consumerism. It provided the individual with the tools to bring this contradiction smoothly together, to suture the wound in predictability. The forward movement of the narrative draws the mind, at moments of such doubt or undecidability, across gaps in hegemonic coherence. Several imperatives underpin this forward direction of narrative. One is the linear conceptualization of time. This is not the place, nor do I have the background, to explore fully the esoteric philosophical question of the nature of time. The concept of linear time, where events are always sequential, never coexistent, is a modern Western notion. Narrative is the reordering of time to fit events into a preconceived framework. Paul Ricoeur connects narrative and linear time on the basis that we perceive events to be happening within time. Thus, if events are to

Theoretical Considerations 35 be related to one another in some way, if it is agreed that time is linear, and if the substance events occur within is temporal in character, then we end up with narrative's being linear, sequential, and moving only and always in one direction. Ricoeur writes, '[T]he ordinary representation of time [is] as a linear succession of instants' (1980,166). Time does not repeat itself. The notion of linear time is infused throughout our culture and reveals itself many times a day in Englishlanguage expressions, such as 'don't cry over spilt milk/ 'that's water under the bridge,' and 'what's done is done.' Time does not go backwards, and we therefore cannot redo things, or re-decide past decisions. Because of the sequential nature of time in Western thought, we can think only in terms of consequences, not redoing. Consequences come in the form of response, alteration, improvement, fix, and damage control. It must be emphasized that this way of thinking about time is cultural. It is not 'natural' but has become naturalized, in the sense Roland Barthes uses the term in his important essay, 'Myth Today/ The conceptualization of time as linear (rather than circular, as in agricultural time, or multidimensional, as in the Dreamtime of an Australian Aborigine, for example) means that a decision is fixed in a linear time continuum. Thus, it is perceived as impossible to remake a decision. This belief has profound consequences for the environment. We can only react, not re-act. We cannot, we believe, erase decisions that resulted, 300 years later, in global contamination. This is used as an argument against fundamental change. Radical change is akin to going back and starting over, and for this reason it is often couched in the language of impossibility by conservatives and liberals. The more sympathetic speak of new beginnings. But radical political, economic, social and cultural change is possible. How did we come to believe that bad decisions can never be remade? We need to challenge the authority of inevitability as the motor of human history. From the point of view being argued here, history does not unfold itself through its metaphysical wisdom; it is produced by agents acting within historical belief structures. What informs the critique of radical change is the notion of linear time, rather than any convincing argument on the nature of possibility per se. The political consequence of this habit of mind - that is, thinking of time as linear - favours reformism. A linear notion of time militates against consideration of radical change, since it tolerates defeatist and fatalist attitudes, making it easier to accept a 'little bit' as useful. As well, there are value connotations to 'backward' or 'forward' that tend to discredit ideas in the past. The past is signified as primitive and the future

36 The Myth of Green Marketing as progressive. By association, this assignment precludes possible solutions that favour simple, unsophisticated technology. It also means modern Western elites are unlikely to consider the wisdom of less industrialized cultures. Consequently, when deep ecologists call for the inheritors of modern Western culture suddenly to take up a biocentric world view and reject anthropocentric false consciousness, they are confronting not only an entrenched ontological and epistemological regime but the very nature of time itself. No wonder they cannot be heard. Activists and everyday people are looking for solutions, not for opportunity/time to re-present itself so that unfortunate decisions can be remade. Green consumerism slips easily into the progressivism of linear time. Linear time, as an unthinking habit of mind is facilitated through a narrative reading of the world. Narrative construction involves following the traditions of literary convention. Like a teleology or a hypothesis, narrative includes elements that lead the reader forward from a beginning, through a middle, to not only an end, but a resolution. This dynamic is what propels the myth of green consumerism. In the words of Paul Ricoeur, '[T]he analysis of time most often performs the role of guide[;] the analysis of narrative, in its turn, serves as a critical and decisive corrective to it' (1980, 168). Thus, prior knowledge of the conventions of reading and storytelling shapes our experience and evaluation; in this sense, we read the world as stories, and it also enables us to jump gaps in narratives when they appear. But this is not the force of absolute determinacy or necessity. The narrative acts like a stimulant in the reader's mind, Donald McCloskey suggests, and he adds that a skilful scientist is like a skilful fiction writer: 'he stimulates us to fill in what is not there. Nothing is given a priori in story form. Even physics is not about the world but what we can say about it' (1990,18-19). What this means for the prospective green consumer is that out of the blur of claims from competing interests, it is possible to produce autonomously a coherent meaning by putting together symbolic clues present or latent in the debate. The green consumerist myth facilitates an explanation of how these clues fit together by drawing on the formulas of narrative as its dynamic and on traditional economic, political, social, and cultural discourses as substance. In other words, the individual holds a great deal of conflicting and unconnected information. Every day brings more. The stories we create from this intellectual nebula are quite varied, depending on which elements we select and which we leave out. Three things are particularly important in the way we choose

Theoretical Considerations 37 to combine elements: first, the familiar multi-disciplinary discourse we inhabit; second, the character of the authoritative voices we listen to for advice; and third, the requirements of narrative. Through the selection and interweaving process, the individual (unconsciously) produces her own meanings of the world. They are not arbitrary, but neither are they exactly predetermined. Some literary critics have described in detail the compositional devices whereby the reader is drawn into and directed through the text. Roland Barthes, in S/Z, refers to five codes through which story components are laid within the text, to be used by the reader in her production of meaning. The hermeneutic code, for example, is the process through which the mystery is suggested and drawn through the text to its resolution. In the present context we could say the mystery is how to solve, or at least to cope with the perceived ecological crisis. The proairetic code is the dynamic itself of the narrative. It indicates the logical sequence of action, a logic that takes its direction from the exigencies of the plot, not from any preconceived ideas of rationality. In other words, this 'logic' is sensible only within the confines of the story being told. A parallel would be a dream. Often, things make sense in the context of a dream, although they may seem nonsensical upon waking. This is an important point, because there are several possible consequences of the environmental quagmire we find ourselves in. Happy resolution is not obvious and prediction is unreliable. Green consumerism persuades with a rationality conditioned by the proairetic code (the exigencies of the narrative), not ecological science. The cultural codes, or the reference codes, provide the legitimacy ('a basis in scientific or moral authority') for the discourse (Barthes 1974,18-19). This is the authoritative voice. Classical economic theory and liberal democracy are cultural codes evoked in the myth of green consumerism. It could be said that narrative itself is one of those cultural codes, that (like myth) it represents a world where resolution to confusion or conflict is the established pattern. Similarly, Tzvetan Todorov writes of 'narrative filters' such as the reordering of time by the reader, having a point of view, formulation of maxims, and so on, which help the reader to construct the referent itself. Events and accounts are run through these filters. An 'intelligible whole,' or 'plot' in Ricoeur's term, is produced (1980, 69-73). Both Barthes and Todorov reinforce McCloskey's point that the narrative stimulates the reader, but it is the reader who makes meaning. Myth functions in this way. It does not falsify truth; it encourages individuals to produce one meaning rather than another. When an

38 The Myth of Green Marketing incongruity appears to challenge the legitimacy of a belief system, we bridge the gap with cognitive habits that resemble movements, such as McCloskey's narrative filters and Barthes's hermeneutic or proairetic codes. This is also how green consumerism works. It is a story that seems reasonable to many consumers because it allows them to make their own sense of a confusing environmental debate and provides them with clear and immediate action they can take towards a resolution. It is also worth noting that every detail counts. Barthes writes that a 'narrative is never made up of anything other than functions: in differing degrees, everything in it signifies/ The usefulness of some details may not be immediately apparent; they may be diffused or delayed. For instance, in environmental marketing the colour green itself flags an ecofriendly product. As well, meanings 'will not necessarily coincide with the forms into which we traditionally cast the various parts of narrative discourse (actions, scenes, paragraphs, dialogues)/ The narrative unit (as opposed to the word unit) may even be a connoted value: in other words, the detail itself may mean little, but the associations it evokes may resonate throughout the text (Barthes 1983^ 261-3). The same can be said of images. Indeed, since much of green consumerism is presented through advertising and public relations campaigns aimed at promoting corporations and industries as environmentally responsible, the signifying power of images is of central concern. It seems that a narrative is a string of symbols, any one of which, upon being evoked, would lead into the relevant story or genre. Narrative, as mentioned earlier, moves in only one direction - towards resolution. This point is important for the present argument regarding green consumerism. An environmentally sensitive purchasing act functions as a symbolic entry into the myth of green consumerism. The myth operates on the logic of narrative and consequently proceeds in the direction of resolution. Thus, one metaphorically acquires the entire resolution on the basis of one symbolic act, and the myth functions to reinforce the hegemony of productivist discourse. Another aspect of this suturing process is the role of genre. The development of genre in narrative theory and historiography corresponds well with notions of renewal in writings on myth. As early as 1961 Wayne Booth related how the genre of the Truth Quest draws the reader forward, following the desire for resolution. The reader may be cast into confusion by the author, who then settles the disquiet by supplying the Truth (Booth 1961, 288). Todorov notes that 'a text always contains within itself directions for its own consumption' (1980, 77). Genre pro-

Theoretical Considerations 39 vides part of this direction. Knowledge of genre allows the reader to predict narrative outcome, so that if an author initiates a tragedy, it is unlikely that the reader will seek a comic resolution, for example. Likewise, in the green consumerist narrative, resolution is most likely to conform to existing genres. These portray nature either as pure and harmonious paradise or savage and powerful wilderness. Either way, nature is not silently rotting away from biological contamination, habitat destruction, and erosion. And, 'since myth and genre are mutually reinforcing aspects of the same cultural process, the achievement of generic form [has] mythographic connections and consequences' (Slotkin 1990, 19). Myth provides the specific story, and narrative provides direction. Thus, although green consumerism manifests itself in different media and in different ways, all these representations have a certain formal commonality. Be it a handbook of products or a glossy public relations campaign promoting the socially responsible character of the petrochemical industry, much of the message will be transmitted through pictures and key words. It is the continuity of form that allows us to identify, perhaps even to seek, genre as a way of making sense of events. Narrative, then, usually takes the form of genres. Consequently, we know how to complete a narrative even when there are pieces missing in specific mythic stories. In fact, Todorov, following Fredric Jameson, claims that absence causes the text to come into being (1980, 145). The essential is absent. The absence is essential. This absence is not innocent; it always compels closure. According to this approach, it is inherent to narrative that a sequence is never complete, because such incompletion is what compels the reader forward. Hayden White picks up this idea. He states that narrative is teleological. Again, we expect resolution; we anticipate and seek a predictable and satisfactory end. What is interesting here is White's suggestion that a narrative mode is drawn from the performative code of poesis (imagination) rather than noesis (reason). This implies that the reader (consumer), when she jumps the gap in hegemonic coherence, may well privilege creativity, playfulness, and personal choice over the confines of utilitarian rationality in order to avoid a contradiction between the rosy expectations of productivist mythology and the evidence of serious environmental consequences. But this is not wild imagination. The absence is not unknowable. The confusion is not a moment of existentialist angst, and the space opened up is not a vacuum. At this point, where the author abandons the reader or the hegemony of productivist discourse is ruptured, the

4O The Myth of Green Marketing victim draws her decision, which functions as the suture, from the realm of narrative/genre/myth. It will likely appear as an obvious resolution. White believes that this 'narrativizing' mediates between the real and the imaginary, between event and meaning (1980, 2-3). Furthermore, the act of choice is a gesture of empowerment, all the more so because it appears to come from an individual's autonomous creativity. Thus, one's reaffirmation of the productivist discourse comes through what may be described as a performative (in the Austinian sense); indeed, a reification of productivist values themselves. Infused into the very shape of our thought processes, the productivist ethic is continually reactivated and reinforced from generation to generation. Through connotation, metaphor, and metonymy, the beliefs and values of productivism flicker and reverberate among interlacing and mutually reinforcing economic, political, and cultural discourses. Because it is an imperfect and always vulnerable process, this inherently unstable structure requires legitimation from a source believed to be outside itself. To be effective, the authority of myth must be dissociated from any obvious source, such as political ideologies or narrow economic exigencies, at least in appearances. Truth must be apparently objective and self-evident; to be found, not produced. The storyteller cloaks himself in truth/ in McCloskey's words (1990,18). Science provides this authority because it provides the epistemological ground. In spite of the doubts of working scientists themselves, and in spite of the interventions of writers like Kuhn and Feyeraband, at the mythic level science as an absolute authority remains intact. To myth, which speaks in symbols to the non-rationality of our emotions and the closed rationalism of its own logic, it does not really matter if in scientific practice there is more flexibility and insecurity than the myth would have us believe. For productivist discourse, then, science provides an unquestioning fundament. Scientific method, reason, technology, highly industrial societies, all bear the credibility associated with a legitimate, objective, metaphysical essentiality. The images and texts of green consumerism make full use of this epistemological authority. Narrative theory is again useful when we consider the authority of myth. Through frequent repetition, platitudes take on an objective quality, cloaking opinion in an aura of truth and inevitability. Even so, much of myth's legitimacy comes from its relationship to previous authoritative discourses, that is, from previous historical narratives. The narrator of either historical events or myth may refer to classical texts, earlier his-

Theoretical Considerations 41 torians and historical accounts, the authority of God, scientific experimentation, archives, documents, artefacts, and so forth. Thus, through 'scientific method' and 'primary' sources the world 'speaks itself (White 1980, 2-3; Genette 1982, 125). Green consumerism frequently evokes the authority of science, modernity, liberal-democracy, and classical economics. Legitimacy of statements is also enhanced in part through the effective use of formal literary techniques. Barthes writes, 'Generally ... our society takes the greatest pains to conjure away the coding of the narrative situation: there is no counting the number of narrational devices which seek to naturalise the subsequent narrative by feigning to make it the outcome of some natural circumstance' (1983^ 287). There is supposedly a clear distinction between fact and fiction in a written work. These elements are distinguished largely through a manner of writing either personal or objective, intimate or formal. Objectivity is intimated through conventions, such as tone, verb tense, mood, so that the narrator/reporter disappears, leaving pristine event to report in its own voice through the supposedly transparent medium of language. The vocabulary of disinterested Truth is denotative, but language is inevitably also connotative and consequently metaphoric and metonymic. The idea of absolute unity of meaning is ludicrous. The reader/auditor inadvertently and unavoidably slips off the sharp corners of intentionality. By using the third person, past tense, and passive voice, agency is eliminated. No agency, no fault; no fault, no responsibility; no responsibility, no change. Things happen to people. There are forces out there that we have no control over that affect our lives: the laws of gravity, the laws of motion, the laws of chemical reaction. The laws of economics. The laws of human nature. This kind of easy slippage between science and culture is so constant and ordinary that it has become invisible.1 We learn about the world and our place in it through authoritative discourses. Social myths, as much as economic exigencies and political structures, are part of them. They provide the interpretative and cognitive mechanisms that have encouraged us to marginalize the environmental critique recently challenging our Utopian image of industrial development, and productivist ethics. This is no small accomplishment, but productivist discourse has had at least 200 years to reinforce its credibility.

2 Resignification of 'Consume7

In the eighteenth century the dominance of mercantilist economic theory was superseded by a modern economic system, which focused on the circulation rather than the accumulation of capital. This radical shift centred its dynamic on large-scale domestic consumption. The reinforcing idea structure of mercantilism required a fixed notion of social class and a corresponding conceptualization of human nature that considered the lower majority of people to be intellectually static and culturally unrefinable. In order for mass consumption as the basis of an economic system to be operationalized, these two key beliefs had to change. Modern consumerism, the discourse upon which green consumerism depends, is a complicated process, which assumes human nature to be dominated by qualities like avarice, envy, and personal ambition. The aggressive, acquisitive individualist, however, is a historical product primarily of the eighteenth century. During this period, notions like emulation, contagion, social levelling, and refinability (among others) were appropriated, re-contextualized, and consequently resignified in a process through which human ontology became reshaped in a manner conducive to the exigencies of productivist expansionism. In this chapter I shall discuss particular aspects of the emergence of consumerism in order to illustrate two points. First, if we expect people to act differently, we need to establish that change is possible. Consumption as a concept depends on historical, contingent assumptions about the nature of the human species and society; thus, its dynamic is neither natural nor inevitable. This point is important because it is central to whether or not change is possible. If acquisition, personal greed, and envy are inherent characteristics of being human, then greens have little basis from which to criticize even the most zealous shoppers gorg.

Resignification of 'Consume' 43 ing themselves on consumables like starving animals. Indeed, even the deepest green must be a latent, repressed goatperson, struggling against a secret desire for useless trinkets. Consuming norms can be changed only if consumerism is a habit of culture, not nature. Second, for the purposes of later discussions regarding environmentalists and green consumerism, it will be useful to explore the complexity of consumerism. Its interdependence with political and cultural discourses have, for over 200 years conditioned our material and symbolic universes. In other words, the symbols used in advertising can be successfully understood by consumers only because they share cultural symbols. Economic, political, and social structures are riddled with the same symbols. We cannot separate culture from politics or economics because all are tied together by a common symbolic language. Indeed, it is culture that circulates these symbols throughout society. As suggested earlier, authoritative leaders (individuals, industry, scientists, sectors of society or the economy, etc.) help us to weave together a story from these symbols. The myth of green consumerism is one such story. We shall also consider how consumerism reinforces other discourses and is in turn legitimized by them. A description of this reciprocity reveals the close relationship of consumerism to productivist discourse. This relationship suggests why a challenge to the apparent coherency of consumerism (as a way of life) also provokes a rupture in the apparent coherency of productivism as an a priori belief system we are born into and whose scriptures we osmose. It is worth taking a closer look at consumerism because of its important place in productivist hegemony. On the one hand, consumerism has been tightly bound to the complex of esoteric economic theory since the eighteenth century. On the other hand, it is so central to the tedium of everyday life that it dissipates in a pool of its own ordinariness, rendering it a non-topic outside the fields of economics, advertising, marketing, and sometimes cultural history. But it is precisely this interweaving among the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects of our routine daily lives that makes consumerism such a powerful carrier of beliefs and opinions. There are no clear, explanatory, causal connections here. The productivist ethic shares with consumerism a commitment to a particular version of human nature, of social organization, of human need, of moral virtue, of the Good. Although the trading and purchasing of goods has occurred for hundreds of years, consumerism became a significant historical topic in the eighteenth century. In strictly denotative terms, consume means destroy

44 The Myth of Green Marketing and devour, but also rot, decay, and perish (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Where the subject is goods or money, the notions of waste and squander are also attached. Consumerism is given to be 'a doctrine advocating a continual increase in the consumption of goods as a basis for a sound economy/ In Key Words Raymond Williams traces 'consume' from the fourteenth century, when it meant devour, exhaust, use up, destroy. This is loss and waste. Associations of a productive, positive nature apparently are not included. Under the demands of mercantilism, the goal of a state was to focus on improving the balance of trade, to be accomplished through government regulations of imports. Tariff walls were erected and energy was focused on increasing production for export. Consequently, domestic consumption of English-made goods amounted to reduced national profit. The term 'consumption' was used in this negative way until the eighteenth century, Williams continues, during which it took on more positive associations, although it was not until the middle of our own century that this new meaning came into general use, owing to the attempted control of markets (Williams 1976, 68-9). Under mercantilism, according to Joyce Appleby, domestic trade was considered 'taking in each other's washing.' In other words, trade between citizens within the same economic unit seemed only to circulate existing wealth; it did not generate new wealth. Consequently, there was little incentive for domestic trade to be encouraged and facilitated on a large scale. Thus, the value of the individual was as producer, a contributor to a nationally aggregated product, not as a consumer in the domestic, internal market. With patriotism as the rationale, members of society did not engage in economic interactions with one another, but were primarily engaged in a mutual venture to sell goods abroad (Appleby 1976, 500). The emphasis was on mobilizing labour to this task. Wealth in mercantilist theory was the consequence of hoarding, not spending; therefore, capital circulation was counter-productive. This thesis was reinforced by the Puritan hatred of waste and selfindulgence. Thus, to purchase commodities for display and accumulation was to 'consume' (waste, squander) resources in honour of deadly sins. As the dominant cultural force, Puritanism promoted asceticism and industry, condemning idleness, luxury and indulgence (Appleby 1976, 509; McKendrick et al. 1982, 13-15, 30-3). The following excerpt is representative of elite attitudes at the time: 'To be born for no other Purpose than to consume the Fruits of the Earth is the Privilege ... of very few. The greater Part of Mankind must sweat hard to produce them, or

Resignification of 'Consume' 45 Society will no longer answer the Purposes for which it was ordained' (Fielding [1752] 1988, 80). When Henry Fielding became magistrate for the city of Westminster and county of Middlesex in 1748, he began a four-year study on the increase in crime. The written document of his inquiry is more a testament to the paradoxical and confused character of the eighteenth century than it is to the field of criminology. Written in a language full of moral and social authority, it is of particular interest here. This document is the product of a fundamental rupture of economic history. It reveals the complex nature of societal codes, as well as mercantilist economics at a time when it was being challenged by consumer-centred economic theory, such as that identified with Adam Smith. Although the historical record is of its own interest, the language and tone of Fielding's text brings out the social ambiguity of the period. It does not read as a desperate scramble to shore up a crumbling social system. Nevertheless, there is a sense of frustrated arrogance in the face of a perceived challenge to what he considers natural and legitimate class values and authority. In the quotation above, the phrase To be born for' suggests that one is projected into a pre-existing and fixed system. The pre-existence of this system and the unequivocal voice with which Fielding refers to it imputes to it a certain legitimacy. Phrases like Very few' and 'greater part' may not be precise, but they, like 'no other/ indicate a firm separation of classes. Furthermore, Fielding uses the word 'Privilege' when referring specifically to the 'very few.' This connection is not necessarily a trans-historical condition. He clearly did not intend contingent societal relations, however, given his use of the more deliberate word 'Purpose.' By his conflation of 'Purpose' and 'Privilege' a relationship of necessity is set up. 'Privilege' implies the existence of a choice that others do not enjoy. 'Purpose' has a much more deterministic, instinctual flavour. The natural and just status of this rigid social organization likely discouraged the poor majority from claiming rights to social and economic advancement. Furthermore, when Fielding claims that the 'greater Part ... must' produce the objects of Privileged consumption, he imposes an obligation - not a privilege or choice - upon others, on the basis of a presumed nature of both humankind and society. Industriousness is a crucial aspect of a homogeneous mass destiny in this reading. Indeed, when Fielding links Society, Purposes, and 'ordained' within the same sentence, he extends authority beyond aristocratic privilege. God him-

46 The Myth of Green Marketing self is invoked in the establishment of these social relations and in the division of labour as projected by those whose duty extends to consuming 'the Fruits of the Earth/ In this reading of human life, society is divided into producers and consumers. These spheres are mutually exclusive. Producers do not consume. Fielding also does not feel obliged to make convincing arguments about what nature requires of each class. In this view, pleasure is the natural condition of Privilege, and to 'sweat hard' is the corresponding position of the majority, in a cosy societal symbiosis established not by the whim of private advantage but by the reason of God. He does not attempt to rationalize this position as democratic or equal, because 'it was ordained.' Note the passive voice here, reinforcing the absence of human agency. In Raymond Williams's definition of consumption he makes a clear distinction between the seventeenth century, when, he says, to consume had extremely negative associations, and from the eighteenth century forward, when it became a value. But Fielding (who is typical of many writing at the time) makes it clear that his objection is to mass consumption, not consumption per se. Later, he emphasizes, 'I must again remind the Reader that I have only the inferior Part of Mankind under my Consideration/ and '[wlhile I am recommending some Restraint I would confine myself entirely to the lower Order of People. Pleasure always hath been, and always will be, the principal Business of Persons of Fashion and Fortune' (Fielding [1752] 1988, 92, 83-4). Note the elimination of any sense of privilege (i.e., opportunity - to be acted upon or not) and the clear deterministic, naturalization of elite consumption in the phrase 'the principal Business of/ Indeed, in both excerpts it is nature itself that forms the ground of these assumptions. Fielding simply describes what he takes to be evidence of a pre-existing and rightful order when he uses the phrase 'always hath been, and always will be/ This order is 'ordained'; that is, it takes its authority and legitimation from God. Implied here is an almost Platonic view of the just society and the common good; each social level accepts its status and engages its duties to the fullest, with the rational elite's performing the leadership role (of course, Plato's elite was not a consuming elite). In these quotes and in Fielding's Enquiry generally, we see the presumption of a unified belief structure that legitimizes ideas of human nature, social relations, the common good, human need, moral virtue, and other components in a systematized view of the world, a vision strongly pre-eighteenth century. The austere, static, production-oriented life expected of the poor

Resignification of 'Consume' 47 majority at that time clearly could not have facilitated the development of a consumerist ethic. What changed? Consumption-Centred Economics The shift in economic thinking occurring over the period from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century is described consistently as a move from focus on the productive aspects of domestic labour to an emphasis on its consumerist possibilities. Harold Per kin writes that 'spontaneous and rapid generation of demand for cheap consumer goods' was the 'key' to the British Industrial Revolution: it facilitated the rapid expansion of fixed and visible capital. Thus, the importance of industry in British society generally increased, a development that benefited the prestige and wealth of those in the industrial class, rather than the aristocracy. Until this time the French were the main producers of luxury goods, which, as Fielding illustrates, were consumed mostly by the aristocracy. But by the eighteenth century England was not a land of peasants. Unlike other European countries, it had a factory proletariat, urban, relatively sophisticated, and with some expendable income. Corresponding changes also occurred in population densities and movements, in the development of healthier living standards, and in the move to a money economy (Perkin 1969, 89-96). Gradually, the idea that wealth was stored in money gave way to a concept of wealth as a consequence of the circulation of money. Although McKendrick et al. and others identify Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations as the source of this change in economic theorization, Joyce Appleby and J.M. Keynes name several writers who were promoting consumer-centred economic theory almost a hundred years before Smith's seminal publication of 1776. Leffemas (1598), W. Petty (1662), Von Schrotter (1689), Barton (1690), and J. Carey (1695) were some of the individuals arguing for the new idea. They promoted various aspects of consumption, such as 'entertainments, magnificent shews, triumphas arches,' and an 'excess of apparel' in order to promote the flow and circulation of wealth and increase the general standard of living. Appleby argues, however, that this shift was impossible earlier because, although the theory was available, the corresponding social belief structures were not sufficiently prepared to challenge mercantilist thinking (1976, 499). As she suggests, many of the seven deadly sins had to be turned on their heads in order to encourage the domestic market. The redefinition of consumerism was part of the nee-

48 The Myth of Green Marketing essary shift in thinking. Consider Adam Smith: The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' ([1776] 1910, 12). This quote brings out several characteristics of the new economics. First, The division of labour Smith talks about is a fundamentally different division of labour from Fielding's separation between producers and consumers. The purpose of Smith's division is to increase productive efficiency; the effect of Fielding's division was the encouragement of social stasis and the restriction of consumption. Both would agree that high production levels were good for the economy. Second, the benefit, according to Fielding, is confined to those who are born to privilege, whereas for Smith the benefit is a 'general opulence' and includes 'many advantages.' Third, there is an assumption that the whole development he describes is outside reason and intention ('not... the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends'); rather, it conforms to the laws of nature, both human nature and an implied natural flow of the universe ('it is the necessary ... consequence'). Last, the 'propensity to truck, barter, and exchange' loosens the ground of mercantilist thinking and paves the way for a new theory, which places the consumer at the centre of its dynamic. Smith writes, 'Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it' (quoted in Appleby 1976, 625). Diffusing the mechanics of economics from aggregation to individual, Smith places the consumer at the centre of the economic universe. This is the heart and soul of productivism. Clearly there has been a change in the meaning of consumption from the pre-eighteenth century definition described by Williams. There are no associations of a limited resource's being wasted and destroyed. Consumption in this quotation is an activity that generates new wealth, not one that prevents and erodes accumulation. This change opened up economic theory to a more integrated articulated economy. It also presumed the weaving of a new discursive matrix. Those who write about this period often look for simple answers. As Nicholas Xenos and Colin Campbell point out, causes for the shift from producer-centred to consumer-centred economic theory

Resignification of 'Consume' 49 have been boiled down by historians of the eighteenth century to emulation and associated concepts. Nicholas Xenos's work on the construction of 'scarcity' within modernity and Colin Campbell's discussion of the impact of Romanticism and the development of a hedonist ethic are only two examples of how much more complicated an understanding of the period ought to be. The purpose here is not to rewrite economic and eighteenth-century history, which writers such as Joyce Appleby, Nicholas Xenos and Colin Campbell have already problematized, but to trace, in part, the shift in the conceptualization of what it is to consume and to draw out the political implications. This shift from notions of exhaust and destroy to associations of luxury and pleasure contributed crucially to the development of capitalism with its ethic of expansionism and promise of abundance. The resignification of 'consume' is also important because those who promote green consumerism are still banking on Adam Smith's concept of human nature. A belief that humans have a natural 'propensity to truck, barter and exchange' has become so infused into the way most modern Western citizens view the world that marketers and advertisers have little problem designing environmental advertising campaigns that will appeal to the prudent, value-oriented consumer. Deep ecologists, on the other hand, fail to appreciate the force of this history. They want people to be environmentally responsible for the sake of the environment. Because they want to implant value into natural entities as things in themselves, greens are less successful at conversion than those voices that tie into the exchange value of nature. It seems that deep ecologists want people to give up something for nothing, but there is no place for noble thought in cost/benefit ideology. In the re-appropriation of 'consume' not only did associations of exhaustion and destruction become excluded, but in the emergence of consumer-centred economics such possible complications as resource depletion and damage to the physical environment were not an issue. A notion of fair distribution as equal distribution would have been premature, given that the struggle for 'social levelling' was very new. And certainly, to define need as biological necessity would have been to miss the point of the new economy. Instead, need became preference, an idea that corresponded well with the new concept of human nature as acquisitive, refinable, and self-maximizing. To round out the modernist picture, secularism, progress, and evolution also became included in the resignification of consume as a moral virtue. The topic of 'nature' condenses a number of different points I want to

5O The Myth of Green Marketing make about how modern consumerism emerged and became a natural dynamic of the universe. During the eighteenth century there was a significant shift in the very idea of nature, both human and physical. The changing conceptualization of nature will be used here as an organizing principle for the following discussion. It brings together the personal, the socio-political, and the cultural as components involved in the development of new attitudes towards envy, pride, and avarice. The celebration of these qualities, previously denigrated as deadly sins, was a key step in the opening up of personal image construction to large masses of people. At the same time, a money economy, mass production, and a mobile social hierarchy developed. This was an important historical moment for the budding consumer-desire industries. It also facilitated the development of consumer attitudes, such as wanting to be the first, having the most advanced product knowledge, wanting to own the most significant, which are also now used by many promoters of green consumerism. Gradually, the confines of a personal identity and social station dictated and fixed by God-given human nature gave way to the idea of individual advancement and a proliferation of status hierarchies. In this sense, culture was winning out over nature, and the human species moved another step further from its ecosystemic context. This struggle for the power to fix the definition of 'consume' illustrates how a nodal point condenses, yet reveals, a number of parallel shifts going on in other areas of society. There are social and cultural as well as economic dimensions to the battle over 'consume/ In our own time the fixity of the meaning of the term is again a nodal point of a number of struggles in the modern political terrain. As we can see, myth-making has been an important part of consumerism for a long time. Within a real symbolic environment, we sculpt our personas in part through our purchasing decisions. Such a persona is responded to in a very real way. If I ride a Harley Davidson and wear a black leather jacket with silver zippers, I identify myself through these symbols as a player in one particular story. Others' response to me will be consistent with that narrative. This is so, even if I am, during the week, a quiet tax accountant in a pinstriped suit (in which case I am a character in a different story, and others will respond to me in accordance with the clues and rules of that particular narrative). My persona is a text to be read and interpreted by others. McCloskey and Barthes, remember, suggest that the author places signs within the text, to be put together in a meaningful way by the reader. This plastic realm of the symbolic is the life and breath of advertising. The designer persona was

Resignification of 'Consume' 51 one of the consequences possible once the nature of the 'industrious classes' was rethought. Release from the strait-jacket of cultural stasis meant that large sectors of the population were now available for consumer persuasion. During the period of mercantilism God was the basis of nature; that is, God created nature; nature had no existence independent of God. Nature was not the final arbiter; God was. This belief gave a secure immutable ground to a very distorted distribution of social goods, as revealed clearly in Fielding's Enquiry, quoted earlier. A distinct separation of discrete, static and pre-existing classes existed for Fielding as a natural order (one is the class of privileged consumer, the other that of 'sweaty producer'). This order need not be argued and it need not be democratic or egalitarian in Fielding's view, because it is Divine. Thus, the order serves God's interests, not the interests of societies or individuals. This Divine order includes attributes like industriousness as a moral good, to be expected and demanded from the 'greater Part of Mankind/ At that time the medieval integrity of the Seven Deadly Sins maintained its coherence, particularly for the lower orders. Consequently, concepts important for the emergence of a modern notion of consumption, such as pride, avarice, and envy, were socially illegitimate, morally reprehensible, and economically dangerous. The exigencies of mercantilism discouraged emulation and imitation as legitimate qualities for all classes. Fielding illustrates the seventeenth-century attitude towards such covetous behaviour when, in the Enquiry, he asserts that a main cause of the increase in number of robbers is the Vast Torrent of Luxury' that has 'poured itself into England in recent years.' This temptation set up a chain of emulations at the end of which 'the very Dregs of the People' aspire to 'a Degree beyond that which belongs to them.' Unable to 'support the state which they affect/ they abandon honest jobs and sink into starvation, becoming 'thieves, sharpers and Robbers' (Fielding [1752] 1988, 77). This is a good transition quote; Fielding realizes something is happening in society, but he speaks from a time that is already past. Emulation Thesis Emulation is a central concept in the writings of the period. However, its moral status changed over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; it shifted from being considered tasteless and immoral to

52 The Myth of Green Marketing being considered natural and celebratory. In the later writings there is often the presumption that envy and imitation of those above one in the economic hierarchy is natural. Supposedly, it was only oppressive structures, such as a non-market economy and sumptuary laws, that previously prevented the whole of British and European society from striving to emulate the class above. Many modern historians writing on eighteenth-century consumerism have also given emulation central importance. Neil McKendrick et al. write of the 'Veblen effect' (1982, 38), a reference to Thorstein Veblen's thesis that one can, through selective costuming, impress others as a member of a superior station. Consequently, this impression will encourage others to treat one as a member of that class. Veblen placed a lot of importance on dress, considering it 'the signature of one's pecuniary strength.' More crudely, he asserts 'a cheap coat makes a cheap man' (1925, 70, 170). Phrased more elegantly by Mandeville: Tine feathers make fine birds' ([1724] 1924,127). This point is not trivial. The myth of green consumerism is similarly promoted by both commercial advertisers and pro-market-reform environmentalists. The myth is identified to the cognoscenti through the idiom of symbols. At the same time as the subject is interpolated, she affirms the viability of the myth and its story. The central character is the enviable trend-setter proud to be on top of the latest world issues. She is a leader, not a follower. She knows how to engage in a pro-active way with problems (e.g., the ecological crisis) that are of concern to major heads of state, the United Nations, and smart investors. She gets to be knowledgeable, avant-garde, empowered, and stylish, all at the same time. Harold Perkin agrees with the emulation thesis, as do many historians (e.g., Gordon Vichert, George Simmel, McKendrick et al., Veblen), when he writes, 'Consumer demand was the key to the Industrial Revolution and social emulation the key to consumer demand' (1969, 96). It is taken as given, although never argued, that emulation and its bases ambition, pride, envy, and vanity - are always latent in the human spirit and that they are the obvious and natural responses to displays of wealth. In this reading of history, we all are motivated by a desire to own a string of constantly changing new products and by a drive for upward social mobility. If it is true that greed and self-promotion are, in fact, our most dominant natural characteristics, then we do not need the myths and narratives of lifestyle advertising to encourage us to buy. In this case, it

Resignification of 'Consume' 53 would also not be possible to construct anything but the most authoritarian ecofascist state if our impact on the ecosystem is to be reduced. The emulation thesis implies, by extrapolation, that consumerism is not a cultural, economic, and political activity, but it is a natural tendency of the species. It is through this kind of conceptual slippage that politically opportune cultural beliefs and social myths become infused into everyday common sense. Although latent, they shape or limit attitudes towards social change. Whether or not human nature can be so absolutely knowable, the emulation thesis has philosophical and economic, as well as political, implications. It legitimizes an aggressive system of industrial expansion and an unequal world order that perpetuates mass human poverty and ecological destruction worldwide. For these reasons, it is important at least to question the emulation thesis here. As we shall see, green consumerism perpetuates, indeed it depends on, the acceptance of this view of human nature. Because of its Utopian component, emulation provides the social imaginary necessary for myth construction. There needs to be something or someone worthy of one's emulation. In this way, the commodified imagination functions as a bridge between desire and myth. But emulation is significantly different from fantasy. It assumes agency. Emulation is not envy; it is the erasure of envy. Emulation teaches us that we can affect our will. The empowerment to act is an important principle, which can be appropriated for many purposes. When consumers deliberately chose not to buy Exxon fuel in protest against the Exxon Valdez tanker spill, they made a political statement. By emulating the social-activist technique of boycott, motivated consumers opera tionalized their desire for the end of environmental damage. Emulation provides an actual, imaginable way forward from desire to mythic actualization. It works because the act has a symbolic function of entering the subject into the myth of green consumerism, which leads, through narrative processes, to a satisfying resolution. Many of the writers mentioned above refer to the role of persuasion, for example, advertising, and to the structured development of domestic markets. McKendrick et al. describe the advancement of the Veblen effect by peddlers, through product promotion at fairs, newly developing mass circulation magazines, fashion plates and dolls, as well as advertising columns in the local press (1982, 22, 41, 43, 47, 97). Perkin admits that factory owners had to take pains to stimulate the workers' desire for money and consumer goods (1969, 90). But the actual mechanism through which display and image necessarily generate desire for

54 The Myth of Green Marketing possession is never articulated. If envy and greed are so natural, why was it necessary to promote consumerism? There seem to be two simultaneous interpretations here. On the one hand, a 'spontaneous and rapid generation of demand for cheap consumer goods' occurred because everyone admired and coveted the immediately superior social status (Perkin 1969, 91). On the other hand, there was a need to plan, promote, and actively advance that 'spontaneity/ Historical documents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries facilitate both readings. Through the emulation thesis, greed, envy, covetousness, and pride became naturalized as obvious universal traits of the species, which had only to be set free from the backwardness of feudal economic and social relationships. The emulation thesis, however, is open to question. First, it fails to establish the causation it assumes. As Colin Campbell points out, as an explanation of modern consumerism, emulation functions as tautology, not causation (1987, 29-30). It is not possible to show that envy and covetousness are the natural responses to the wealth of others. Perkin himself admits that consumer spending is not the obvious thing to do with extra income, when he reminds us that peasants used to hoard any money they acquired. They saved it to dower a daughter, buy an extra piece of land, and so on (1969, 91). Or, as Campbell notes, early industrial workers used surplus income to pay someone else to work for them; they valued free time over consumer goods (1969,18). At the time there were many complaints written about how difficult it was to get workers to put in more hours than it takes to subsist. Appleby quotes Francis Gardner from 1696: 'the Poor, if Two Dayes work will maintain them, will not work three'; and another reported being able to get workers 'within a fifty mile radius of London to work only "if two days pay will keep them a week"' (Appleby 1976, 513). Historically, there have been alternative attitudes to living a life of constantly seeking the material status of others, religious communities being perhaps the most organized expression. A related problem is that societies do not have one, homogeneous, agreed status hierarchy. There are a number of disparate status communities, and they can have very different signifiers and priorities. Campbell gives noble birth as an example of an alternative status index (1987, 54), to which we can add groups that set their status hierarchy in deliberate opposition to what they perceive to be the dominant social codes. Such anti-establishment subcultures include artistic communities (e.g., the Dada movement, avant-garde art, the beat poets, earth works,

Resignification of 'Consume' 55 mutilation artists) as well as back-to-the-land movements, hippies, punks, and so on. As Dick Hebdige, writing about punks in 1979, pointed out, a safety pin or a pointed shoe can take on the function of stigmata, indicating a 'self-imposed exile' (2). This is a conscious resistance to, and rejection of, the perceived dominant status hierarchy. As well, social subgroups concerned with the physical environment share a status hierarchy that in many ways is the opposite of what is presumed in the emulation thesis. Furthermore, one is situated in several status hierarchies simultaneously. Consequently, when the consumer is faced with a product choice or conflicting claims regarding the environmental responsibility of industries or corporations, these hierarchies come into conflict. This conflict reveals a moment of distress in the hegemony of productivist discourse. Do I really value convenience and acquisition over clean air, water, and food? Can I really trust the leadership of government and industry? The construction of emulation as natural, by writers at the time and subsequently by some historians, was also the construction of it as inevitable. But it was not inevitable. Not only could it have been otherwise, it was otherwise, as writers in the Mercantilist period, such as Fielding, have clearly indicated. Two assumptions underpin the naturalization of emulation as inevitable: the notion of social levelling and the public discourse of contagion. Social Levelling During the eighteenth century there appeared to many to be a growing stratification of classes. Simple, sure categories identifiable by all gave way to an exponential social disruption. A writer from 1756 notes that 'the different ranks of people are too much confounded; the lower orders press so hard on the heels of the higher, if some remedy is not used the Lord will be in danger of becoming the valet of his Gentleman' (as quoted in McKendrick et al. 1982, 53). In the British Magazine in 1763, on the subject of fashionable dress, a commentator complained that 'the present rage of imitating the manners of high life hath spread itself so far among the ... lower life, that in a few years we shall probably have no common folks at all' (ibid.). The separation of classes so prized by Fielding and the like-minded, such as those quoted above, meant separate cultures, separate goals, separate desires, separate tastes, and separate imaginations. But for the development of an economy based on exploitation of the domestic mar-

56 The Myth of Green Marketing ket, a less disparate mass of consumers was necessary. Such an objective did not require total homogenization, but it did require enough of a common vision and value system to deliver a profitable share of the market. A finely stratified social system with blurred edges facilitates emulation and the development of a mythic social imaginary because it is easier to move a short distance than it is a long distance. Many eighteenth-century observers believed that society had become a '"finely graded hierarchy of great subtlety and discrimination'" (quoted in Perkin 1969, 22). This structure 'allowed' a '"gradual and easy transition from rank to rank7" (quoted in McKendrick et al. 1982, 20). Clearly, a more fluid hierarchy, which allowed movement between stations, was emerging. Political liberalism aided this process, as the individual gradually became defined as a free, autonomous chooser/actor. As Appleby notes, however, the change meant that the landless were delivered 'into the hands of a new master - the market, through which they sold their labour and bought their bread' (1976, 512-13). For stratification of class to be of importance, it was necessary for human nature to be conceived as generally refinable. That is, individuals in every social class, not only the privileged classes, must be capable of cultural 'improvement/ Thus, the idleness/industriousness dichotomy had to be taken out of moral discourse and embedded in that of economic rationality, that is, the internalized market of which Appleby writes. When a cost-benefit analysis replaces the moral force of God, the only way to self-improvement is in the marketplace. This is a crucial point for consumerism not only as an ideological corollary of expansionist economics, but also for the phenomenon of green consumerism. The idea that the marketplace can be a vehicle for private fulfilment, the expression of one's moral commitment, and the assertion of one's status makes it a useful site for identity construction and personal statement. Some would argue that such use may lead the individual into the manipulations of false consciousness. But one may also suggest that it opens up the marketplace as a potential site of political struggle. These positions will be pursued in chapters 3 and 4. As the earlier quote from Fielding indicates, part of the mercantilist cultural baggage was a belief in the discrete and fixed nature of classes. When this belief began to break down and the chance of upward mobility emerged, refinement of taste became a cultural requisite, because, as Campbell notes, good taste was an indispensable part of the existing ideal of character (1987, 158). The promise of a high-quality life projected into this idea of refineability is expressed in this passage from

Resignification of 'Consume' 57 1690: The Wants of the Mind are infinite, Man naturally Aspires, and as his Mind is elevated, his Senses grow more refined, and more capable of Delight; his Desires are inlarged, and his Wants increase with his Wishes, which is for everything that is rare, can gratifie his Senses, adorn his Body, and promote the Ease, Pleasure, and Pomp of Life' (Appleby 1976, 505). There is a clear progression here that moves from simple to complex, from crude to sophisticated, from animal desire to refined taste. This 'natural' aspiration is evolutionary in direction, implying that the mind gains ever more control over the senses. Indeed, the elevated - that is, educated and trained - mind is infused with the power to shape desire itself. Under such circumstances mythic susceptibility may well be enhanced. The generalized reference to elevation and refinement indicates the existence of shared values and standards and some agreement on what is worth knowing. The spirit of this sentence is consistent with the belief that the direction of culture, as well as nature, is onward and upward by definition and that the more legitimate knowledge we have, the better life must be. Expansion as a condition of human existence is not only desirable, it is inevitable. Confident, optimistic, and self-congratulatory, the above quote oozes with the naive assumption that good taste is the triumph (if not the Telos) of human accomplishment. But unlike Fielding, this writer (Nicholas Barbon) believes that it is in human nature to refine one's cultural abilities. The 'Fruits of the Earth' and 'Pleasure' (Fielding) are not confined to the privileged few who were born to them. Language like 'Aspires/ 'elevated/ 'grow/ 'more capable/ 'inlarged/ 'increase/ 'promote/ which riddles this one sentence, infuses human nature with a dynamic, organic quality that presumes rationality, desire to be upwardly mobile, and a common status hierarchy. Two points are worth reinforcing here. The advancement referred to is the product of the acquisition of culturally legitimate knowledge. The refinement of taste is a cultural accomplishment that presumes the learned ability to distinguish the appropriate from the improper, the beautiful from the grotesque, the important from the trivial, the elevating from the debasing, and other discriminations. But crucially and paradoxically, the 'Wants of the Mind/ that towards which 'Man' 'Aspires' that leads in the direction of 'Ease, Pleasure, and Pomp' is 'every thing that is rare' (my emphasis). It is not the fulfilment of any metaphysical notion of common human destiny that unites us in our striving towards the Good; it is the desire to distinguish ourselves from the pack of the ordinary. Indeed, Nicholas Xenos argues that it is

58 The Myth of Green Marketing precisely scarcity itself that is the operative component in desirability within modernity. It is not simply unavailability that is important here. As Xenos phrases it, 'the stylish always possess a scarce resource independently of the things themselves/ He connects this propensity with the individual's desire to carve out an identity independent of, and superior to, what is imagined to be a homogeneous mass society (1989, 94-6). But if to be a leader means to be the holder of esoteric and rare knowledge, then this popularization of refinement presents a problem for elites. If everyone's taste can be schooled to equal that of the aristocrat, then who is superior? How will elites identify themselves and each other? It is interesting to see how important this notion of superior knowledge is. It largely underwrites leadership and has resulted in some notions that ought perhaps to be questioned. This is in principle the same awe out of which the notion of 'genius' was invented, the respect for institutional education is promoted, and the admiration for those who excel at board games like Trivial Pursuit is generated. Indeed, it is interesting that a British television game show that challenges its contestants to spew out like trained parrots bits of decontextualized, irrelevant annunciations masquerading as erudition is called 'Mastermind.' The kind of myth generation that advertising depends on, then, presumes that class mobility is possible, that identity is an autobiography and that the autonomous individual is in control. This approach to human possibility is a radical departure from pre-eighteenth-century notions of what it was to be human. The consequence of this change is that the social imaginary has increased its field of vision. We may argue that the idea itself of consumerism as an inevitable consequence of natural human tendencies is the function of the ideological imperatives of economic expansionism. On the other hand, this discussion suggests that anti-consumerist campaigns that treat consumerism simply as a nasty habit, moral failing, or an act of irrationality will have little success because they underestimate its modern significance (more on this topic later). As we see, the mass consumer market has been promoted for over 200 years as a venue where autonomous, rational individuals can exercise democratic choice, personal development, and individual empowerment. An effective problematization of consumerism as a facilitating cultural component of productivist hegemony is essential. But such a critique must ask what role does consumerism play in the lives of modern Western individuals? Unfortunately, the agents of productivism are considerably ahead of ecologists on this one. Advertisers speak

Resignification of 'Consume7 59 the language of consumer power and autonomy. Indeed, the advertising industry has grown up as an integral part of productivist discourse and is well equipped to market the Apocalypse. The co-existence of class proximity with expendable income, however, does not constitute a causal relationship. Through what necessary process does a particular set of social conditions 'generate' specific emotional consequences and particular desires? What is behind the 'generated'? How does proximity 'generate' desire and acquisition? Campbell is also concerned about these leaps of logic, suggesting that the whole thesis of 'emulation fueling demand helped along by manipulation of producers and advertising do not amount to a logically related set of propositions' (1987, 38). This is because, as was true in the eighteenth century, the basis for these claims is a presumption about human nature; that is, proximity 'generates' by activating latent behavioural instincts - a dynamic of natural infection. But while proximity may imply contagion in the case of infectious diseases, emulation cannot take proximity as its imperative because emulation describes a cultural relationship, not a biological one. I suspect that this language of contagion was appropriated from the discourse of disease and contagion being popularized at the time. English communities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were infused with the presence and fear of infectious diseases. By September 1665 the last major outbreak of plague was claiming 7,000 deaths a week in London. For over 200 years there continued a constant struggle against pestilence such as scarlet fever, measles, and diphtheria. Smallpox was a constant fear; most people could expect to be infected, and the disease disfigured many. There were constant investigation and discussion into the causes of these diseases and their transmission. As well, there were public campaigns to prevent infection based on proximity and contagion (G. Smith 1941, 3-4, 8-10,127; Lobo 1990, 220-41). The language and concept of contagion permeated texts beyond the range of medicine. No one may have understood the cause of those diseases, be it stinking mists, Divine wrath, or rotting coffee (G. Smith 1941, 34), but people did know such diseases were highly infectious, with those living closest together, the poor, being the most devastated. In his Enquiry, Fielding complains that 'Vices' are no easier to stop than 'Diseases/ 'for bad Habits are as infectious by Example, as the Plague itself by Contact.' Later, he calls on politicians to 'prevent the Contagion [of Luxury and Diversion] from spreading to the useful Part of Mankind' (1988, 77, 83-4). Mandeville, in a rather confusing section of Fable of the

60 The Myth of Green Marketing Bees where he cannot seem to make up his mind whether envy is an aspect of human nature or a vice subject to infectious transmission, refers to the 'Epidemick Envy'; he also refers to the 'Distemper' and 'Symptoms' of envy ([1724] 1924,136,140). John Dennis, writing in 1711, called for the suppression of Luxury, calling it 'the spreading Contagion of which is the greatest ... Extinguisher of Publick Spirit' (Vichert 1971, 256). Clearly, there is a slippage of language between contagion as the natural flow of physical disease and contagion as the conduit of social norms. Conceptually, this slippage occurs because transmission through proximity in the natural world is extrapolated to human society. This parallel legitimizes, by association, the idea that the communication of social values is involuntary, uncontrollable, and impartial, because infection is a dynamic of the physical world, inaccessible to the manipulations and interest of human intentions. Likewise, green consumerism maintains the hegemony of productivist discourse by stealing the language and central icon of ecologism - nature - and turning it against itself. Thus, nature is appropriated by productivist discourse as an object of its own. This ironic, but convenient, appropriation of nature then functions as an instrument of value-free, objective legitimation. Nature is pure, unadulterated existence. It is self-referential and selfenclosed. It is a hermetic, auto-dynamic universe with its own logics and mechanics. It is useful to Productivism that nature be conceptualized as objective and non-partisan. Green consumerism trades on this concept, invoking the objective aura of nature to reinforce its own credibility and thereby to establish a bridge between industry and the environment. Objectivity and neutrality are thus assumed to be value free. But are they? Both are cultural, human concepts and are by definition distinct from notions of bias and intervention. Yet all these positions are judgments. Surely there must be consciousness if there is to be judgment. Nature cannot have consciousness, however, if we construct it as a set of physical laws. Nature emerged as neutral because the historical conditions required it to be so. In pre-modern times nature was the product of God. It was the Enlightenment and modern science that pried nature away from God. God is a moral universe. In this separation, nature became removed from the ethical realm and became a discrete, a-moral neutrality on the basis of its conceptualization as a set of universal physical principles. The separation of humankind from nature occurred with Cartesian dualism. Raymond Rogers associates this change with moder-

Resignification of 'Consume' 61 nity. After the disengagement of culture from nature, the social significance of the natural world diminished (Rogers 1994, 20). For our consideration of consumerism this separation is important, because it was God (the universe of morality) that legitimized the Puritan discourse of frugality and self-sacrifice that helps to ground mercantilism. As Campbell notes, moral arguments are not easily overthrown by utilitarian ones. Consequently, it was the re-conceptualization of nature as morally neutral that was essential for development of the consumerist ethic central to new economic theory. One could now legitimately be an envious, gluttonous, proud, avaricious, self-maximizer without being thrown out of the Kingdom of God. One might say that this development turns Sartre on his head. Instead of Nothingness constructing consciousness by poaching Being from other objects, our consciousness projects Being onto other things in the world. Erasing this moment of production, we then turn Sartre back on his feet and believe we are perceiving the Being of nature as neutral, acultural, a system of physical laws of motion and transmutations - like contagion. Nature's laws can then be evoked as a source of legitimation in the promotion of certain acts as politically, morally, and socially disinterested. Furthermore, when one product is claimed to be more natural than another or a corporation declares itself to be environmentally concerned, the purity and truth of nature's judgment resonates and thus, by connotation, confers positive value associations on the product, corporation, or industry. Neutrality is supposedly a social good because it indicates that no specific individual or group interests contaminate it. Nature as neutral bystander can then function as an unbiased arbiter. McKendrick et al. refer to 'fashionable contagion' and '"the infection of the metropolis"' (1982, 50). For them the 'closely packed social strata' of the eighteenth century is of 'obvious' importance for the 'rapid transmission of new wants, for the rapid spread of new fashions ... class competition, social emulation and emulative spending' (20). It would be unfair to imply that McKendrick et al. insist the contagion, or 'bridging,' as they put it, was arbitrary. They and Perkin note the development of product promotion, rising real incomes, increasing population, and better health generally as contributing factors in the epidemic of mass consumption. Harold Perkin writes that a graduated and mobile class structure and an increase in expendable income 'generated the social emulation ... the competitive spending which infected all levels of society' (1969, 91, 96; McKendrick et al. 1982, 41). Whatever the truth and dynamic of emulation, by the time Adam

62 The Myth of Green Marketing Smith writes in 1776, the idea of social levelling is much less controversial. He writes, The difference of natural talents in different men, is, in reality, much less than we are aware of ... The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education' (A. Smith [1776] 1910, 14). For Smith, commerce is the agent of this refinement, spreading ideas and products from one country to another. He writes that throughout Europe 'the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country' (A. Smith [1776] 1910, 370, 359). The contagion of desire and the will to emulation, unquestioned by many historians, have frequently manifested themselves in the mythfilled world of product promotion. In the exciting, affluent, and glamorous realms imagined for us by advertisers, there is no room for images of waste, destruction, and resource exhaustion. Product consumption is a private act through which we connect ourselves to dominant social, political, and economic structures. Narrative theorists write of clues and symbolic references laid within the text by the author, because she or he anticipates that the reader will put them together in a predictable manner (Barthes's writerly text). This is the same logic that product promoters have used for 200 years to sustain the 'inevitableness' of such infectious envy. Indeed, the goat-like image of humans' having a natural, instinctive attraction to shiny objects and having an indiscriminate appetite for potentially dangerous consumables makes no sense outside the matrix of productivism. Thus, we tie together our beliefs, ethics, and fantasies through the concrete vehicle of discrete purchases. New, consumer-centred economic theory required a re-conceptualization of consumption as a productive, virtuous, rational activity. From the interweaving of mutually reinforcing discourses this new meaning emerged. Several points can be drawn out for our purposes. One is the changed characterization of human nature. The apparent purity of this concept was thrown into doubt when contradictory claims were made for it. The individual is now believed to have much more autonomy. Capable of independent, rational thought, he or she freely exercises choice on this ground. There was also a changed vision of human need, one that placed emphasis on preference as manifest demand. Former, biologically based concepts of need were superseded when the belief that human beings are fundamentally acquisitive, competitive, and selfmaximizing began to dominate. Adam Smith states it directly: It is not

Resignification of 'Consume' 63 from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages' ([1776] 1910, 13). This obsessive individualism (Appleby's economic rationalist) is boldly asserted with the force and matter-of-factness of natural description. This attitude finds parallels in liberal political theory at the time, with its emphasis on the autonomy and equality of individuals. It is important to note that the self-maximizing, covetous emulator is a historical product belonging to productivist discourse. As a narrative substance (F.R. Ankersmit's concept), it has ontological status. Indeed, as shifting and contingent as this definition of human nature is, it has had great economic, social, and political influence. Ideas of moral virtue were adjusted accordingly. As Appleby notes, one's loyalties were no longer to the nation, but to oneself. Meanwhile, Puritanism gave way to belief systems more amenable to capitalist exigencies. Adam Smith reinforced this trend in his economic theory with the concept of the invisible hand. The common good is promoted, he tells us, not in spite of personal profit seeking, but precisely because of it. Each individual 'neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it ... [H]e intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention' ([1776] 1910, 400). The unintended consequences of avarice vindicate personal greed it seems. During the Mercantilist period this may have been the case for the aristocracy, but by the end of the eighteenth century, British virtue had caught up with Mandeville. For Fielding, emulation was the problem; for Mandeville, it was the solution. Thus every Part was full of Vice, Yet the whole Mass a Paradise. The Root of Evil, Avarice, That damn'd ill-natur'd baneful Vice, Was Slave to Prodigality, That noble Sin; whilst Luxury Employ'd a Million of the Poor, And Odious Pride a Million more; Envy it self, and Vanity, Were Ministers of Industry.

Mandeville [1724] 1924, 24-5

64 The Myth of Green Marketing This belief became the new ethic, but need as preference is not easily accounted for, and moral virtue as community welfare is not so simply dispensed with. In the passage from Smith the individual is led' by an invisible hand inevitably and immutably towards the public interest. For all the autonomy and freedom Smith grants the individual, there is still an outside omniscient and omnipotent organizing factor that ensures the protection of the common good. Smith does not argue against the existence of community interest, nor does he suggest it is of no value. Indeed, in his Wealth of Nations he is centrally concerned with it. The phrases 'his own gain/ 'their advantages/ and 'his intention' are left as unfixed in their specificity as the 'public interest/ The new consumer-centred economic theory required a reshaping of popular vision, a reshaping of desire, a reshaping of the nature of the absence presumed by desire. Emulation was not only of concrete others but of a new social imaginary's being produced, a vision that ends up as a kind of totalitarian phantasmagarchy, where the raison d'etre of humanity is perpetually to seek a never-ending stream of constantly changing consumer goods and services. Excessively Adornoesque as this vision may seem, such an orgy of desire fulfilment through acquisition cannot cohere. But it is this perpetual instability itself that maintains the apparent stability and legitimacy of the political, social, economic, and cultural matrix of the modern consumer society. It is unstable partly because it is always under challenge and partly because desire is always a movement towards something that by definition can never be attained. It is only need that can be fulfilled.

3

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism

It is important to remember that modern consumerism is tied not only to economic, political, and social aspects of productivist discourse, but also to ethical and ontological assumptions as well. Because of the significant capitalist contribution to productivist discourse, consumerism, so central to it, became signified within the positive, Utopian aspect of productivism by excluding critical social and ecological voices. The marginalized elements of the eighteenth century have remained latent, ready when the historical moment appeared to threaten the Utopian version of productivist discourse with inversion. At this point the inherent instability and constructive nature of the discourse are revealed. As discussed previously, waste, devour, exhaust, loss, and destruction, originally part of the term, were aspects of the concept that became irrelevant in the climate of the new economics. Consequently, the cost to the environment was not a dominant issue, either in terms of pollution or in terms of resource depletion. This dystopian side of productivism is receiving more attention in the 19905, since the affluent North realized that, ecologically speaking, there is no place to run. The global impact of environmentally hostile substances and practices is now generally accepted. Given that industrial development is identified widely as a central source of the crisis and given the important role of the consumer in the economics of industrialization, it is not unlikely that some within the environmental movement would campaign against consumerism. In this chapter I shall consider different factions of the environmental movement, their position in relation to productivism, and the role of consumption generally. In the next chapter green consumerism will be considered more specifically. It would take some serious homogenizing to attempt to characterize

66 The Myth of Green Marketing greens as a unified field of resistance. Like other political movements, environmentalism is a composite of philosophically diverse organizations and individuals. Although Anna Bramwell locates the difference among greens as stemming from biology or energy economics (1989, 4), the most consistent divide within the literature is political and separates greens into reformists and radicals. Jonathan Porritt talks in terms of two poles. Conservationists he characterizes as conservative with no interests in changing society. At the other extreme are the radicals who are the heirs to Kropotkin, Thoreau, and Godwin. He does admit that the large bulk of environmentally concerned people fall in the middle, but his description of them differs little from the conservative pole (Porritt 1984, 4-5). By 1988 he and David Winner were also describing green politics in terms of dark and light, with the radical (dark) greens seeking 'nothing less than a non-violent revolution to overthrow our whole polluting, plundering and materialistic industrial society/ More clearly homogenized in this later work, light greens are single-issue reformists (Porritt and Winner 1988, 9). Andrew Dobson, in Green Political Thought, argues that a recognizable green ideology has emerged in spite of the variety of positions within green thought. That ideology, 'ecologism' is a radical identity, generated by eliminating reformist tendencies. On the other hand, reformist environmentalism includes single-issue groups, such as conservationists and bird protection societies. According to Dobson, such groups want only to fine-tune the existing social/economic/political system. Thus, he implies, they do not question this matrix at a fundamental level. It is what he terms 'ecologism/ which calls into question the entire world view from the Enlightenment. This radical approach to green thought 'constitutes a challenge to [the Enlightenment] project and to the norms and practices that sustain it/ It also questions 'whether dominant postindustrialism's project of material affluence is either desirable or sustainable' (Dobson 1990, 2, 8-9) Bramwell also sees the green movement as a 'new political category in its own right/ She defines it as inclusive, involving, among other things, 'right wings and left wings' as well as other tendencies and strands (Bramwell 1989,13, 39, 238). Arne Naess acknowledges that people can become attuned to the environmental crisis through a number of different avenues. In this way he is less crudely polemical than many writers on green issues. He envisages the ecological movement as an articulation of diverse groups and individuals rather than as a homogenized mass. Even so, he also divides green approaches into reformist (shallow ecology) and radical

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 67 (deep ecology) (Naess 1989, 27-8). The list could go on and on. Roderick Nash, in his densely referenced Rights of Nature (1989) traces the ethical history of this divide. Murray Bookchin sees this cleavage between reformist and radical environmentalism as a crucial place of struggle within the movement because of the reactionary danger of reformism (1982, 58; 1989,160-1). Others are less concerned about establishing a clear boundary of inclusion and exclusion around what it is to be an authentic green. Some emphasize a commonality among greens. Naess does so, as does Sara Parkin. She takes the position that, if there is change, it will be as a result of people working in a wide variety of areas simultaneously (Barkin 1988,168, 176). Brian Tokar and Robert Goodin focus on commonalities among greens. Goodin, however, in contrast to someone like Naess (and more in the spirit of Bookchin), argues for an all-or-nothing, principled green position that will guarantee against other parties' poaching the Green Party's platform at their own strategic convenience (1992, 14). Tokar expresses the unity-in-diversity approach (1987, 56). Thus, in spite of the wide pattern of explanation and description regarding green philosophical and political views, there emerges a family resemblance in the way writers characterize the environmental movement. There is stated or implicit recognition of an ethical difference between those who believe we can reform our way to a sustainable future and those who believe that only radical and wholesale restructuring of beliefs and human behaviour can save the planet. This dichotomy (or contradiction, as Bookchin would have it) is important for the discussion of green consumerism, as we shall see. Sometimes the distinction is not easy to discern. Goodin, for example, is looking for a common ethical denominator that will be irreducible and non-cooptable; but he excludes, sometimes in a culturally ruthless way, those who do not fit into his idea of the rational, authentic green.1 Even Tokar, whose approach is smoother and apparently more inclusive, follows his 'unity-in-diversity' and 'interconnectedness' seductions with the sentence 'But a green vision is more than just a list of reforms' (1987, 56). Presumably, some ecofriendly readers will be left behind at this point. This is the boundary where liberalism meets anarchism. It is precisely at this point that green consumerism offers its hegemonic suture. It is the radical, deep ecological side of the environmental movement upon which I now want to focus. It is this faction of the movement that voices the most radical and convincing challenge to productivist dis-

68 The Myth of Green Marketing course, and it is from here that the most direct and profound attack on consumerism emerges. For a long time, there have been nature conservation groups. Indeed, some writers, such as Bookchin, would argue that it is partly the cooptation of reform-oriented, single-issue naturalist societies that has prevented a more embracing critique from taking hold. Since the 19805 and 19905, however, the most effective, penetrating, and dislocating critiques have come from that element of the environmentalist tradition that, because of its radical nature, was kept marginalized for so long. It is from this element that the anti-productivism and anticonsumerism critiques take their political, economic, and ethical force, and it is here that the concept 'consume' again becomes a site of political struggle. We do not need the military metaphors of Sara Parkin to sense that there is a battle going on. White, middle-class hunt saboteurs suffer a violent response from British hunt supporters, as do indigenous communities resisting tropical rain forest destruction in Brazil. The 'skirmishes into hostile territory' (Parkin 1988, 176) made by a variety of ecologists or environmentalists are perceived to be worth the risk because enough credible sources agree that 'Exponential population growth, combined with increasing per capita consumption of resources, combined with increasing destruction and exploitation of the natural environment, is unsustainable, is already resulting in calamity and will result in catastrophe sooner rather than later if current trends are not reversed' (Ekins 1986,12). Consider this quote more closely. To speak of exponential population growth does two things. For one, it conjures an image of violent and explosive multiplications, uncontrollable and irrational - like a cancerous cell. The other association is with Malthus and the frightening spectre of his lifeboat ethics. Both references are threatening. It gets worse. Enhancing the fearful image of this merely introductory phrase is a consumption ratio that multiplies along with it, gobbling up resources and devastating the earth's surface at a correspondingly explosive rate, leaving no room to doubt the consequences. The vocabulary of exhaustion, irreplaceability, and ecological breakdown dominates: 'population growth/ 'consumption/ 'destruction/ 'exploitation/ 'calamity/ and 'catastrophe' are qualified by words like 'exponential/ and 'increasing/ Also note the syntax. The sentence itself is over-long; the commas as punctuation are too weak and ineffectual to slow significantly the eye or the breath. These techiques speed up the rate at which the reader con-

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism

69

sumes the message. The phrase 'combined with increasing' is repeated even within the same subordinate clause. This repetition, along with the large number of words of destruction, creates a powerful emotional effect on the reader - exponential one might say. These are not the quiet phrases of bird-watchers and trail-tenders. This is the language of the Apocalypse. Obviously, anyone writing in this field believes that environmental damage has occurred. Many do not waste space describing it. Such economy is considered by some to be a function of intellectual progress. Does the movement really need one more hysterical catalogue of what can go wrong, might go wrong, has gone wrong, or will go wrong? Robert Paehlke suggests that the Apocalyptic scenario was a product of 19603 and 19703 environmentalism (Paehlke 1989, i). Brian Tokar takes it as given. Although he begins with an explanation of 'where we went wrong/ he does not elaborate on what 'wrong' looks like, concentrating more on a way of getting back in good with nature (1987,14). The collection put together by Paul Ekins (1986) is similar, but its focus is on the connections between the requirement for a fairer world order of wealth distribution and on the need for a way radically to rethink economics in resistance to the existing expansionistic model that dominates most nations regardless of ideological posturing. This is a hard-headed, unromantic collection of writings in the spirit of change urged by the Brundtland Report, but without the compromises. Of course, it is true to say that notions of destruction and loss have always been a part of the environmental and conservation movements. Otherwise, what are they against, if not the erosion of the natural world? Roderick Nash provides a long list of groups and actions that, historically, have brought about preservation of places and species, such as the nineteenth-century establishment of national parks in the United States, the setting up of the Sierra Club in the early 18905, the passing of the British Cruelty to Animals Act in 1876, the initiation of the English Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824, the prohibition of bear-baiting in Chester in 1596 (Nash 1989, chaps i, 2, passim). According to Porritt, some trace the antecedents of green politics to the seventeenth century and groups such as the Shakers, the Quakers, the Diggers, the Ranters, the Pilgrims, the Fifth Monarchists, and the Levellers, with 'their fiercely independent spirit of egalitarian politics, their love of the Earth, their decentralist tradition, etc/ (1984, 6). Bramwell describes the modern movement since the end of the nineteenth century as a fusion of holistic biology and resource-scarcity economics, strongly

70 The Myth of Green Marketing connected to the liberal, Protestant middle-class intelligentsia of Britain, Germany, and the United States (1989, 5). What makes contemporary writings different is an awareness of the scale of the problem and the interconnectedness between enabling factors. As the excerpt from Ekins suggests, the language is apocalyptic at times, conveying the perceived urgency of the crisis and the fear that there may be a point of no return regarding environmental damage that will foreclose the future even if at some point there is a widespread awareness and willingness to make radical changes. Similar visions, from the popular book A Green Manifesto by Sandy Irvine and Alec Ponton, further illustrate the point. They write, 'Contemporary industrial society is crushing the individual, local community and environment alike ... In pursuit of the politics of "moreness," governments of all shades are fast chipping away at civil liberties and local freedoms that stand in their way/ Later, in chapter 2, entitled The Road to Ruin/ they assert that human activity has become a 'malignant cancer draining the vitality of the earth/ and The Earth ... is indestructible but unless we change course, human society faces self-destruction, taking many other life-forms with it/ Some societies have committed 'ecological suicide' in the past, they acknowledge, but 'today the problem is global/ Problems are piling up. Some countries are 'skating on thin ice/ The cracks' are visible, but The deepest cracks are opening outside human society, where our centuries of exploiting nature are fast approaching a violent climax. Acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, topsoil erosion, the greenhouse effect, disappearing jungles and extinct wildlife are examples of an assault against the Earth itself (Irvine and Ponton 1988, 2-7). Again we see the extreme language of all-out destruction: 'crushing/ 'malignant cancer/ 'violent climax/ 'disappearing/ 'extinct/ 'assault/ and 'suicide/ True, there are less intense words, such as 'chipping away/ but they occur in the context of a multifaceted, endless activity, which ends up at the same place; chipping simply implies that the process takes longer. Although the Gaian point of view that the earth is indestructible is reassuring, for anthropocentric humans (the implied audience of the text), this is small compensation. In spite of references to topsoil, jungles, and the ozone, the earth has been anthropomorphized and then violated. 'Assault against the Earth' evokes associations of rape, as does 'violent climax/ Also interesting here is the awareness of the scope of the problem and the interconnectedness of enabling factors. In the first quote, Irvine and Ponton identify 'contemporary industrial society' as exercising a 'crush-

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 71 ing' effect on human culture, politics, and society as well as the environment. They say the problem affects the individual but is also global in extent. A connection is implied between an expansionist political economy ('moreness') and the erosion and destruction not only of the physical environment, but of civil society as well. Governments of all ideological views erode liberties and freedoms. The 'malignant cancer' is industrial society. Like a cancerous cell, it is of the substance itself, but grows wildly out of control, contaminating more and more of those factors necessary to sustain life. In literal terms, the Earth cannot have cancer. Yet, just as fear of smallpox contagion flickered through the language of eighteenth-century public life, in our own time cancer is the metaphor of choice. Here, it appears as a symbol for the Earth's slowly dying of a terminal disease. Not only does the metaphor seem unremarkably congruent, but also it is no doubt easily understood by most readers. Consumerism is considered by many radical greens to be a central site of struggle in the development of a new green ideology. Anna Bramwell says ecologists object to consumerism, not because it is too materialistic but because it is not materialistic enough; that is, it fails to understand and respect the material world (1989, 245). But most writers criticize consumerism because of its position in the maintenance of expansionist economics, which has had devastating consequences for the environment. As Dobson points out, political ecologists argue for a reduction in economic growth. Consumerism, he adds, is the most useful place to begin discussing this possibility because 'consumption implies depletion implies production implies waste/ He suggests that consuming environmentally benign products is not enough; the 'Good Life' as posited by ecologism presumes less consumption. Actual resource depletion must be reduced because the principle of scarcity and the limit to growth it ensures is the founding principle of environmental politics (Dobson 1990, 80, 89, 93). The attack on consumption is reinforced by many green analysts and ideologues. Jonathan Porritt reminds us that one of the central principles of capitalism is the belief that the 'grotesque and self-defeating appetite for continual expansion' in the production of goods and services and the promotion of their consumption is the route to create wealth to meet needs (1984, 45, 147). Mary Mellor also complains that mass consumption has been highly promoted throughout society and that the business community has felt current pressure enough to

72 The Myth of Green Marketing attempt to short-circuit the potential impact of challenges to their interests (1992, 203, 184). Irvine and Ponton state that traditional economic theory has constructed an unecological model of reality, based on the notion of an endless cycle of supply and demand (1988, 59). Ecosocialism has made an important contribution to our understanding of the underside of productivism. Colin Hay links politics and economics in a very direct way. He maintains that an 'environmentaleconomic contradiction' is the 'root' and 'fundamental' condition of advanced capitalism's growth imperative. Working from Jurgen Habermas, Hay believes liberal democratic governments are suffering an 'environmentally-induced legitimation crisis.' Responses to the crisis find their political manifestation in a number of directions. Liberal democratic states, which rely on the consent of their citizens, engage in perception control in order to maintain political support. This is accomplished, says Hay, through token displays of concern, 'the "greening" of legitimating political ideology, and the displacement of the crisis in a variety of different directions,' such as individualizing the crisis through promoting green consumerism and other 'superstructural tinkering' (1994, 219-22) In the end, he suggests, we must have a radical restructuring of perceptions as well as of the political and economic structures. Hay makes a number of important points. We may counterpose the environment and economics as a contradiction, but, Hay reminds us, there is no denying the fidelity of entropy. When Hay notes that it behooves the government to respond politically to this crisis, he clearly reveals the political (and constructed) nature of market economics. There are many illustrations of liberal democratic governments (and others) scrambling to appear to be taking the initiative at the highest level in response to global ecological concerns. I would not want to get too conspiratorial. A reductionist base / superstructural model allows little room for agency. The lines of power and control are overdrawn here. If capitalist politicians and industrial marketers must be constantly vigilant and reactive, they are possibly not as secure in their omnipotence as some Marxists would have them. I would agree with Hay in his belief that we need to have a radical reframing of perceptions as well as political and economic structures if real ecologically responsible change is to occur. My argument is, however, that most citizens of capitalist liberal democratic societies have an attachment to their belief structures that is not a function of mere perception. This is why the study of culture as an actor

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 73 is so crucial. Culture is not a mask or an illusion. It is not what some people have and others do not. It is not what people do on their days off. We can never be outside culture; it is the air we breathe. For this reason, I do not see the 'growth imperative' as solely a condition of advanced capitalism. I see it as the ethical imperative of productivism, a totalizing political, economic, and social system with particular ontological assumptions. It is a post- (and maybe pre-) Enlightenment ethic that also found expression in the former (self-proclaimed) socialist countries as well as in so-called developing nations today. No economic theory determines the inevitability, or necessity, of destructive growth. Indeed, it could be argued that it is our ontology that shapes our economics. For this reason, it is difficult to sort out where government displacement activity leaves off and citizen opinion begins. I take it that people hold opinions for reasons, be they emotional, scientific, spiritual, cynical, or rational. In liberal democratic society citizens do share a consistent set of common discourses, and received information will track along those familiar lines. Governments are practised at coding their displacement activity through those reassuring conduits. Thus, when individuals make meaning of the world, they usually do so sincerely. How does one separate out the artificial from the authentic? Because of this confusion, I think it makes more sense to examine how perceptions came to be the way they are and to understand how these opinions are maintained in the face of powerful counterfactuals. Like Hay, James O'Connor situates expansionism within capitalism. He writes, 'From an economic point of view, sustainable capitalism must be an expanding capitalism'; green marketing and recycling are strategies in maintaining that growth (1994, 156-8). However, while capitalism may have had a central role in the development of productivist discourse, it is entirely possible for Marxism to replicate this role, given its theoretical strategy of taking over the state, rather than destroying it. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a mechanism to change social relations of production and the basis of distribution, not to tamper with the expansionist ethic of productivism. Consequently, even though the ecosocialist critique has many important analyses to make in the relationship of consumption to environmental degradation, my complaint is with this economistic obsession, which marginalizes other important factors. Political economy is a necessary part of understanding the functional role of consumption. But ordinary, everyday urban life is held together by cultural habit. Without understanding the power of social beliefs, faith, and common sense, no campaign to reduce con-

74 The Myth of Green Marketing sumption can be successful. In this case, the study of myth and narrative is as important as the study of economics and politics. Another source of radical critique is ecofeminism. Like other social movements, this group is diverse, and all opinions cannot be homogenized into one common platform. Elizabeth Carlassare suggests that their unity is in their resistance to domination (1996, 221). One theme, however, does seem to run through much of the literature: women and nature share a special bond, based on a perceived parallel between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women. The idea of a parallel between women and nature is a source of debate among ecofeminists. There are two basic approaches to this theme: one is what I would term the 'birthing thesis/ and the other is termed by Robyn Eckersley the 'oppression thesis/ The birthing thesis is based on the assertion that because women birth children, they are 'closer' to nature than men are (Dobson 1990, 199; Archambault 1993, 19-20). Central to this thesis is the essentialist assumption that the sexes have innate, fixed qualities, which are constant across different cultures and historical periods. These characteristics are not products of cultural or social environment (Carlassare 1996, 221). It seems that this special affinity with nature affords women a superior status in environmental concerns. Because of its biological orientation, Eckersley terms this the 'body-based argument' (1992, 66). But the position goes beyond the body; it even goes beyond reproduction. Men, after all, are also involved in reproduction (although you wouldn't know it by the most extreme examples of this literature). While some women believe the birthing thesis is a source of power for women, others believe that it looks suspiciously like the same old discourse used to dominate women for centuries (Dixon and reply by Gruen 1996; T. Berman 1993, 16-17; Archambault 1993, 20). Ynestra King argues against this position because it splits nature and culture (1994; 201-2), and Elizabeth Carlassare notes that all essences are constructions (1996, 222-3). Another concern one may have with this position is the privileging of organic reproduction over the other activities of the physical world. One assumes that the reason women's bodily reproductive functions are a source of 'closeness' to nature is because of the importance of propagation for living things anywhere in the food chain. Organic reproduction is important to nature as a material reality, but it is not nature that establishes a hierarchy of its activities. It is not clear in the ecofeminist literature why reproduction is more 'natural' (hence morally superior) than

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 75 rock slides, lightning strikes, dust storms, glacier movements, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, or floods. Is the endless action of waves on the shore really less important in the cosmic overview than one more baby of the North born into a gluttonous rampage of resource depletion? While the prose may be purple, the intentions are green: some would argue that we need to take a critical look at human reproduction, not mindlessly to celebrate it. Like others, I also question the essentialism of this position. It centres so exclusively on the ability to birth. This is not about parenting, or even about motherhood: there are lots of adoptive mums around. And if women's liberation was supposed to be about choice in all social and cultural arenas including childbirth, there is no remnant of that in the ecofeminist literature of this orientation. The assumption is that women are defined by their bodily organs first and foremost, whether they identify with motherhood or not. Mere association with motherhood by sex is enough. Neither infertility, disinterest, infanticide, nor menopause allows women to leave the orbit of motherhood. Those of the birthing thesis want to use a selected reading of nature to support what is, in fact, a cultural argument. Every time we ascribe traits to a sex, we are constructing a cultural category: gender. Is it wise to argue for a society that promotes social norms traditionally associated only with women? According to Eckersley, we need to transcend sexual stereotypes and concentrate on the best human values (1992, 66). The argument to sustain the birthing thesis takes its imperative from the cultural realm, not from physical nature. A powerful argument grounded in philosophy, politics, history, and ecology can be made. In the human world, which runs on cultural and social tradition, such discourses are the air we breathe. Is it really necessary to resort to mystical claims of a natural and spiritual superiority for one sex? Indeed, more sexism only leads us back into hierarchy and away from an ethic of balance and coherence. The other approach common in ecofeminist literature centres not on childbirth, but on the notion of a shared oppression. Eckersley refers to it as the 'oppression argument' (1992, 66). This approach emphasizes the domination and subordination, historically, of both nature and women, regardless of biological claims or cultural ascriptions. Val Plumwood reminds us that being judged as closer to nature, in the sense of being less evolved (more primitive and less civilized) has long been used to justify the subjugation, control, and exploitation of people of colour and white women (Plumwood 1994, 211; Eckersley 1992, 69; Dobson 1990,

76 The Myth of Green Marketing 197). Nevertheless, an ecofeminist analysis of power leads us closer to an understanding of the logics and tools of oppression as a concept and as a material reality. What has ecofeminism to do with productivism and consumerism? Ecofeminists are generally not interested in such concerns - at least not in any obvious way. But their critique is important, because it strikes at the very heart of productivism in its radical critique of the logics of domination. Productivism assumes domination. Therefore, ecofeminism of whatever faction aims to end (intended or unintended) thoughts and ideas central to the maintenance of productivism. Whether one believes essences are found or socially constructed, and whether one believes analyses of oppression have any effect in the grand scheme of things, ecofeminism gives no quarter to productivism and its selfcongratulatory industrial glory. Plumwood argues for a politics of articulation among movements; she suggests we begin our analysis by understanding the interwoven nature of oppression (1994, 209). Socialist ecofeminists also believe that these violences against both women and nature are linked to capitalism as well as patriarchy (Archambault 1993, 9; T. Berman 1993,15-16). In this reading of events, women are tied to production. Indeed, one may argue that, in a sense, they are the agents of productivism. Women as the most active consumers perpetuate the ideology and material experience of expansionist productivism. Through even the maintenance of their households, women can be seen to be a major barrier to reducing resource depletion and pollution. In this way, both women and nature are subjugated by continued capital accumulation (Salleh 1994,107). As we can see, ecofeminism is part of the radical critique of productivism. But it is not the intention of those who promote the birthing thesis to challenge productivist expansionism as an ethic. Those who analyse oppression, however, make the connection. Ariel Salleh suggests that women's everyday practice of sustaining their families' lives can be a model for harmonious living with the environment. This connection can be made with a cultural and material argument, not a biological determinist or mystical argument. Many women in the South do this, although it may be judged as poverty by the North. 'Unlike women's work, the market economy is disconnected from daily physical realities, its operational imperatives bear no relation to people's needs; its exponential "growth" trajectory even kills off its own future options as it goes/ Thus, expansionism and sustainability are incompatible. But instead of being the vanguards of sustainability, women have

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 77 lost their autonomy to consumerism and therefore are caught living the deepest contradiction' (Salleh 1994,106,120-1). If greens are to offer a clear alternative to the growth dynamic of the existing economic world system, their critique must confront a number of market-oriented issues. Many of the most comprehensive and credible attacks come from The Other Economic Summit (TOES). This is an international group of theorists and activists who have come together in the spirit of the Brundtland Report and the call for a New International Economic Order, which was made by the 'developing' world in the 19805. TOES has organized alternative economic conferences running parallel to the Group of Seven industrialized nations economic summits and has published a large number of professional papers. It promotes a new economics concerned with 'human needs, with the nature of work, with economic self-reliance and with health as wealth' (Ekins 1986, 2). Central to the TOES critique is its opposition to economic growth as the panacea for all social and national problems: The assumption is that growth is good and more is better. It is as if economists had never heard of cancer' (note the metaphor). Growth per se is not the target of this attack; what is questioned is the belief that growth has the logically necessary consequence of increased human welfare. From an ecological point of view, this obsession with growth fails to take into account the limiting factor of finite resources. Gross National Product (GNP), for example, from an ecological point of view is a measure of resource depletion. Green economists take seriously the law of entropy. Thus production, because of both energy needs and primary material extraction, leads in a one-way downward spiral (Ekins 1986, 8-11). Focusing on GNP as a measure of economic progress greatly encourages the increased rate at which resources are exploited and the planet is polluted. GNP measures all goods and services provided through the market or through government spending. Governments are always trying to decrease their own expenditure and increase market activity, accomplished in part through privatizing government responsibilities. This has the effect of decreasing government's own share of GNP relative to the market. Thus, the importance, authority, and legitimacy of the market are enhanced as more and more aspects of everyday life are controlled by it. Within the market, the environmental and resource depletion costs are never accounted for. Herman Daly refers to 'entropic degradation/ that is, the one-way erosion of usable energy and materials. Entropy violates the principle of conservation of both these categories. Conse-

78 The Myth of Green Marketing quently, not only does the recycling process use up more irreplaceable energy, but recycling itself can never be 100 per cent complete. Some fraction will always escape. Therefore, we must consider the environment a closed system (Daley 1991, 146-7; Ekins 1986, 35; Bramwell 1989, 64). Some attempts have been made, however, to value the environment. Normally, traditional costing centres on prices of labour and capital; this leaves out unpriced inputs, such as the environment. Many environmental inputs have not been costed because the ordinary marketplace is inadequate to evaluate anything that lies outside a buying and selling transaction, according to David Pearce. Therefore, existing market prices for goods and services do not fully incorporate the resources of their production. Turner et al. suggest that it is possible to include valuations of the environment into costing formulas, although much of this work is subjective and imperfect by the terms of economic discourse. For example, individuals may be asked what value they place on particular environmental inputs, or attempts may be made to establish replacement costs for loss of aesthetics or health (Turner et al. 1994,114, 116,1.22). Pearce advocates 'modifying' existing markets to ensure environmental costs are included in the pricing of goods and services. Such 'marketbased incentives/ for example, a pollution charge or carbon tax, would have the effect, he maintains, of increasing the environmental quality standard without direct intervention by government. Notice, however, that this does not challenge the legitimacy of the market and the growth ethic. At the same time, he sidelines green consumerism as not able to have an effect on production processes (Pearce 1991,174-7; Naess 1989, 123). Others, such as John Elkington and Tom Burke (1987), would agree. Private enterprise and sustainability are entirely compatible, they maintain. But for the moment let us concentrate on the nature of the radical green challenge to consumerism and its role in the expansionistic ethic. Most radical ecologists disagree with those who argue for compatibility. If the entropy law is correct, recycling and environmentally sensitive shopping will only prolong the inevitable. Consequently, they encourage a rethinking of the market, a severe critique of economic growth as a viable principle, and a reduction in the volume and rate of consumption. All these issues of growth, market, and pricing point to the inadequacy of traditional economics to come to terms with a finite physical world. Arne Naess writes, 'A change in the ideology of production and

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 79 consumption is not possible without considerable change in the economic machinery. At present, the machine seems to require and to produce a distorted attitude to life. Within such a well-oiled system, a revision of value standards in favour of all-round experiential values, life quality rather than standard of living, must sound like a dangerous proposition' (1989, 25). A number of issues are suggested by this quotation. A connection is made here between economics and politics. The production/consumption symbiosis functions as a dichotomous ideology. Belief in its credibility as the real dynamic of an economically prosperous nation reinforces the supremacy of GNP as a metaphor for welfare, but the way Naess phrases the system here allows some relative autonomy to each of the two elements. He is saying that they are interdependent but not interchangeable or merged. So the ideology of production and consumption must contain some elements that are related to but not necessarily limited to an economic system. Implicitly, then, a challenge to one part poses a threat to the whole web of interwoven factors if interdependence governs their relations as described. Let us draw out some general implications, which will be important in the more detailed substantive analysis of green advertisements and green marketing texts in chapter 5. The 'system' or 'machinery' is that of classical economic discourse. The market is assumed to be a natural consequence of the human individual's natural inclinations to 'truck, barter, and exchange/ Because it is 'natural/ it is disinterested. The neutrality of the market thereby guaranteed, it can then be called upon to provide non-partisan, objective, Just arbitrations. As we saw on the issue of costing, the market is also, within traditional economic theory, the source of determining the true value of things. The reinforcing belief system that allows the market supposedly to function with the precision and disinterest of a calculator constructs the individual as a sentient, conscious being and a rational, autonomous self-maximizer, making knowledgeable decisions based upon the free flow of information regarding products and services, which is made available through facilitating factors such as the advertising industry. This scenario dovetails with and receives reinforcement from liberal democratic political theory. The same subject is a holder of rights by virtue of being human and makes wise, informed decisions in the political marketplace. For both these discourses the aggregate equates with the general will. Their interwoven nature will be clearer when we consider actual texts.

8o The Myth of Green Marketing As Naess indicates, however, these logics are thrown into question by the radical environmentalist challenge. The deep green critique helps to point out the slippage and easy extrapolations that occur. The economics of supply and demand equations overlap with social and political discourses to produce an apparently moral community. As Adam Smith believed, the aggregate of individual self-interested decisions would result in the Common Good.2 The Common Good is usually considered to be the reflection of the majority moral standard of the community. In this sense, the market could be viewed as a neutral instrument used to arrive at a democratic community norm. In the language of John Rawls, traditional economists see the free market as having an inherent Veil of ignorance' (because of its natural status). Naess and other deep ecologists reject such encroachment by market logics. The notion of a 'distorted attitude to life/ however, presumes that there is an authentic approach to life that is being perverted. 'Value standards' must be dislodged from a system that 'requires' a moral norm, which is produced by market dynamics. Although phrases like 'all-round experiential values' and 'life quality' are vague, there is no doubt that a direct attack on productivist ethics and logics with full economic, political, social, and cultural implications is intended. The 'attitude' mentioned by Naess includes a reassessment of the subject/object relationship vis-a-vis nature, development of a new idea of wealth, and an attempt to establish a compatible definition of need. Roderick Nash locates the shift from anthropocentric to biocentric environmentalism in the 19605. With this elimination of the subject/object antagonism, the status of nature became an ethical, not only an instrumental issue. This is the radical green position, and it imputes intrinsic value to the objects of the physical world (Nash 1989, 9-10). If attitudes towards what economists see as primary were to change in the biocentric direction on a large scale, there would be an impact on concepts of wealth, status, needs, and wants. Consumption patterns and, more important, volumes could suffer. It is this issue of a green theory of value that Robert Goodin grapples with. He attempts to ground a 'green theory of action' upon a 'green theory of value.' The exact track of his argument is unnecessary here. What is important, however, is that he recognizes that the whole conceptualization of what is valuable in secular Western society must be reexamined at its most fundamental level and that a major disruption must occur here.3 Although I am not sure Goodin argues his case particularly well, he is one of the clearest of green writers in his understand-

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism

Si

ing of how material is the philosophical notion of value (1992,14). Green politics must pose a clear alternative to the value system assumed by the major political parties if the consequent and necessary political, economic, and cultural changes are even thinkable. Qualities of naturalness and authenticity are central to Goodin's green theory of value. A natural process, he writes, is of greater intrinsic value than an artificial, human one: we value the original over the fake or the reproduction. He argues that qualities of naturalness and authenticity are important for three reasons. First, people need coherence in their lives. Second, this coherence requires the existence of a larger context - harmony between the inner and the external worlds. Third, the idea of a natural process allows such a larger context (Goodin, 1992 27-38). Qualities of naturalness and authenticity and their relationship to coherence support many other tenets of radical green political thought and would have profound implications for consumerism. It seems, then, that it is the emotional security of a coherent world that is crucial here. The idea of harmony is mentioned by a number of green thinkers and ties together the proposed ontological shift to biocentrism, the pressure for a new ethics of responsibility to the environment, and the radical ecological claims regarding needs, wealth, and wants. Brian Tokar writes, 'we are all part of nature. For most of human history, people lived in close harmony with the natural world' (1987, 9). Porritt and Winner call for total non-violent revolution and want to replace the existing system with 'a new economic and social order which will allow human beings to live in harmony with the planet' (1988, 9). Naess, too, asks us to make a gestalt shift to a life of concordance with nature (1989, 54-63). Others refer to our violent disengagement from harmony. Irvine and Ponton describe our thinking as 'divorced from feeling and nature is viewed as an enemy' (1988, 9). Porritt, in his chapter 'A system without a soul' writes, 'Alienation has indeed become a way of life, feeding on the ethical and spiritual vacuum at the heart of our society' (1984, 93). Paradise lost, then, is a clear theme in green literature: 'Where did we go wrong?' asks Tokar (1987, 14). Many believe that the ethical and spiritual vacuum mentioned by Porritt is indeed a central condition of life in the late twentieth century. Some would suggest that we attempt to fill this spiritual vacuum with material abundance. As well as in the concept of irreplaceability, some greens want to ground their politics in a notion of absolute, essential scarcity. For most greens nature is no social construction, but a non-interpreted, primary, found condition - the foundational given of all life. Scarcity is a charac-

82 The Myth of Green Marketing teristic of that materiality. Abundance or wealth, from this point of view, cannot be responsibly defined as a good if it is predicated on damage to the environment. Herman Daly suggests that scarcity forms the basis of community because it necessitates cooperation, sharing, and friendship (1991,149). For many deep ecologists this foundation of scarcity is where we must look to reconceptualize notions of wealth. Arne Naess writes, The ecosophical lifestyle appreciates opulence, richness, luxury, affluence' (1989, 88). The wealth of nature for Naess and most deep ecologists, however, is in its living enjoyment, not in its destruction. Consequently, within this new value system, industry, commerce, and market are not sources of abundance or wealth. In deep ecology wealth is a quality of the spirit, achieved, according to Naess, through 'self-realization' (1989, 199-201). This is the intuitive understanding of connectedness between oneself and that larger context found important by Goodin, which gives coherency to our individual lives. Much deep ecology assigns importance to intuition, spiritual values, and other metaphysical notions. The radical green discourse suggests that a deep spiritual security can provide a sense of personal satisfaction and can replace the destructive consumer-oriented status hierarchy that now exists. The spiritual quality of the environment, particularly the wilderness, features large in green political thought, and it is not confined to the ecofeminist literature. This celebration of untrammelled wilderness, however, is not all innocence. Ramachandra Guha challenges both the universality and the spiritual basis of deep ecologists. By selectively evoking Eastern religion, deep ecologists attempt to universalize what is in reality a specifically American philosophy. Furthermore, their biocentrism and obsession with wilderness can have devastating effects if exported to the South. Guha gives the example of Project Tiger in India, where thousands of poor peasants were moved off their land in order to set up a series of American-style wilderness preservation parks (1996, 284-6). There are other, less narrow conceptualizations of the environment, such as the built environment or urban environment. But the deep ecology view, from which the most foundational critique of consumerism comes, presumes, but does not argue for (because it is based on an intuitive way of knowing), an understanding of the environment as nature in its pristine condition. Indeed, this view is central to Goodin's green theory of value. Porritt and Winner lament the fact that 'a crude consumer-driven culture prevails in which the spirit is denied.' The arts,

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 83 for example, have atrophied almost out of existence (1988, 247). Many greens believe that a sustainable society would provide richer and more varied forms of human fulfilment than a life of material consumption. 'Greens invest the natural world with spiritual content/ Dobson adds (1990,18). For many, then, consumerism is the antithesis of spiritual fulfilment. Implicitly, they seem to consider the will to accumulate to be a moral issue, not an economic, a social, or a cultural issue. At the same time, many say that if we simply give information to people about the environmental impact of consumerism, they will stop their frenzy of shopping. Again, the logics of this argument are not fully explained and seem to trade on socialized assumptions. Supposedly, individuals are rational, autonomous, conscious beings. As a result, they are capable of making reasoned choices on the basis of information and knowledge. For most greens the individual is capable of making choices outside the limits of pure self-maximization. The environmentally aware person can and will make a choice in the interests of the community because of the effects of what Naess calls 'self-realization/ that is, the understanding that the individual self is connected to nature. One may argue that this understanding is still self-interest: it is in the interest of individual greens to ensure that the environment stays healthy and that the consequent survival pressures on human populations do not become too extreme. Even so, if these rational individuals are provided with abundant, accurate data as well as logical arguments based on scientific evidence, including predictions of environmental degradation and depletion of our finite resource base, they should elect to change drastically the way their own lives affect the planet, including greatly reducing their personal consumption. There does not seem to have been such a response on a significant scale. The green theorist is left with a dilemma: Why has change not occurred in the well-educated, information-inundated North, where relative choice is possible? Indeed, choice is a favourite buzzword in the North's smug opinion of itself. It seems to me that when reason fails, the only other explanations are irrationality or immorality. I do not think that any social movement can afford to view its possible constituents as irrational, because cure or conversion would be unlikely. Indeed, green literature, of whatever shade on the environmental colour wheel, does not do so. We are left with the image of large numbers of rational but immoral decision-makers. They know that their lifestyle activities are harmful towards the environment and the common good, but they continue nevertheless. I believe that this theme does run through much of the

84 The Myth of Green Marketing radical environmental literature, but it is only obliquely alluded to. For example, Arne Naess warns greens against the moral nagging of their possible constituents: 'Without a change in consciousness, the ecology movement is experienced as a never ending list of reminders: 'shame, you mustn't do that' and 'remember, you're not allowed to' (1989, 91). The operative phrase here is 'change in consciousness.' In the final analysis, it is the crucial requirement. Thus, we see a constant call in the literature for a 'metaphysical reconstruction' (Porritt and Winner 1988,146-9). The moral and the environmental flicker together here, reinforcing the image of nature as a place of moral purity. It is the locus of spiritual renewal, and as such, it is the plane of the intuitive. Corresponding to the promotion of a new ontology based on a return to holistic thinking, deep ecology also implies a shift within our epistemological base by changing the balance between reason and intuition. The scientific mind privileges rational reflection and formal logic over feelings and emotions. This is the basis for how we come to have knowledge of the world and how we understand it to be true in the modern industrialized North. Although most environmentalists do not say so directly, much of green literature does presume greater legitimacy for the intuitive. Even the most conservative birdwatchers would want more people to be sensitive to the sights and sounds of nature and to realize that there is a desire to preserve that which cannot be limited to mere rational thought. They may not want to push that opinion too far, however, outside the local wetlands. Deep ecologists, many of whom are suspicious of where technoscientific thought processes have led us, may consider that Reason has simply become instrumental rationality. That is, we dress up will in the cloak of rational thought. This perceived perversion of Reason may be part of why radical greens want us to privilege intuition more. The human faculties so admired by the Enlightenment were the ones most broadly useful to developing industry. This fact has been enormously fruitful in Western material history. The corporatism of science, industry, and government, however, has not encouraged the development of an empowered subject confident of her own ability to accumulate and produce knowledge, including intuitive knowledge. All the while, capitalist economics and liberal political discourses have been telling us what a lucky bunch of individualistic, rational choice-makers we are. The human subjects that emerge live in insecure tension with their own individualism and ability to make empowered decisions. I am not suggesting that our societies are simply aggregates of homogenized autom-

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 85 atons. Nor would I agree with Bramwell that there is always a desire for transcendence (1989, 243). I am arguing that there is a tension between the autonomous and the automaton, between the managed lives we lead and the relatively autonomous individual, and that the metaphysical reconstruction required by deep ecology encourages acts that push the balance of that tension towards greater relative autonomy of the individual. The metaphysical component is important because it reinforces the power of individual knowing and this knowing is most effective in the realm of the intuitive. Furthermore, this type of knowledge may be less influenced by discourses of persuasion and reason. Perhaps, therefore, they may be less open to cooptation by unreconstructed productivists, such as opportunist politicians, advertising agencies, green marketers, and other sophists. Deep ecologists are primarily looking to find a balance between reason and intuition, however, rather than hoping to invert the extremist logics of techno-scientific instrumental rationality. Naess's Ecosophy T is one example; it is a personal philosophy, one that accepts the realm of the intuitive as a legitimate place of knowledge gathering. In other words, the sense of spiritual peace one may experience in the wilderness is as real and legitimate a component of human knowledge as those elements acquired from non-intuitive sources. Deep greens want us to listen to this inner voice and act according to its knowledge. From a deep ecological point of view, then, Reason and intuition can coexist and mutually inform. This is where the 'self realization' of Naess meets the 'revolution' of Porritt and Winner. Here are the required 'change of consciousness/ the 'holism,' the 'connectedness/ and the 'harmony' described by too many writers to list. It is the political moment where Goodin's 'green theory of value' moves on to his 'green theory of action/ It provides the new environmental ethics that functions as the philosophical ground to value the environment and to act in protection of it (Goodin 1992,15). Abundance and wealth under such a metaphysical regime would be spiritual and emotional rather than material. Needs, to deep ecologists, are primarily biological and spiritual. This belief is not, however, necessarily incompatible with an anthropocentric ecologism. As Eric Matthews notes, 'To have an environmental ethic ... is not necessarily to have a biocentric ethic' (1989, 55). On the other hand, a greater privileging of intuition or the establishment of a 'green theory of value' may not necessarily lead to the activism deep ecologists would appear to pro-

86 The Myth of Green Marketing mote. It could lead to withdrawal and survivalism if it does not find the balance and connectedness implied in Naess's Ecosophy T. Our alienation is ontological, some greens may argue. Deep ecologists, the source of the most principled attack on productivism, seem to view productivism as the rupture in an otherwise harmonious and coherent discourse of nature, and it is nature that provides the larger context of harmony between inner and external lives referred to by Goodin. (Conversely, those who take productivism to be the place of harmony and the deep ecological attack to be the disruption would think otherwise, but that view will be explored in a later chapter.) The subject-object distinction, which is the philosophical grounding that underpins our instrumental attitude towards nature, can no longer be sustained if humanity is to forge a new, cooperative relationship with the physical world. It is, as Naess argues, the 'new ontology which posits humanity as inseparable from nature7 (1989, 2). Such an ontology represents a challenge to productivist discourse at the most fundamental level. If this orientation were to be accepted by large numbers of people, it would have far-reaching and disruptive effects on all aspects of our lives from how we live at the level of the ordinary and everyday to global, scientific, economic, and political activity. Clearly, a non-hierarchic ontology would have an enormous impact on consumerism as a component in a social belief system, as well as consumption as an economic necessity. A duty of care towards the environment could then be argued for, in order to ensure its protection. One does not eat one's neighbours or peel their skins to clothe oneself. Such a comprehensive ontology would effectively reduce absolute consumption (leaving aside the problem of an expanding human population). The authority of notions like newness, innovation, and accumulation as status would be seriously eroded. The concepts of progress and evolution, with their associations of perfectibility and improvement, would have to be rethought. Mass production, especially of goods and services outside the field of a new, reduced view of need, would cease to be defensible. The leadership role accorded Western economic and business elites would lose meaning and legitimacy. From this point of view, the role of green consumerism is diminished, because problems of the environment are multifaceted and deeply structural. Dobson notes that 'Green consumerism is too tied to present rates of depletion, production, consumption and waste to constitute the new set of habits and practices that Greens say we need' (1990,116). My purpose in this chapter has been to make a representative explo-

The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 87 ration of different positions within the green movement and their relationship to productivism and consumption. I have also argued that, at least at the theoretical level, the green movement has presented productivist discourse with a radical challenge. This intentional and relentless attack is articulated most clearly by radical ecology. It presents a challenge to productivism, both in that it puts into question the scientific and philosophical foundations of productivism, and in that it makes an alternative thinkable by positing the vision of a different society, one based on egalitarian and holistic values.

4

Green Consumerism

It was argued in chapter 3 that a serious and legitimate ecological critique of productivist discourse has developed internationally since the late 19805. Because this credible critique is aimed at the fundamental logics of productivism, it has the potential of revealing the constructed nature of productivist discourse. As I have claimed, our most profound understanding of the world (the very ontology and epistemology through which we perceive and act) is symbiotically tied to the idea structure of productivism. This gives apparent cohesion to the ordinary. Consequently, activities and ideas are emerging within the realm of the everyday that act to suture the rift in productivist ideology and allow us to maintain the apparent coherence of productivist discourse. What I have described as the myth of green consumerism is one such formation. In this chapter I shall focus on green consumerism itself, defining it, describing its emergence, and examining the debate around it from the point of view of marketers and advertising strategists, as well as the environmental movement. Although ecologically sensitive purchasing is neither as controversial nor as popular as it was at the turn of the decade, it remains an important component in the struggle for an environmentally balanced life. Environmentalists, marketers, and advertisers were not the only voices in the debate, of course, but they did dominate and represent the major positions. Consumer groups played an important practical role in research and consumer advocacy, and many included ecological evaluations in their work. Few, however, concerned themselves primarily with the environment. Consequently, as theirs was a minor voice in the public discourse on green consumerism, I shall not discuss them separately.

Green Consumerism 89 Definition and Emergence Sandy Irvine describes green consumerism as 'the use of individual consumer preference to promote less environmentally damaging products and services' (1989, 2). This use can be quite minimal. One study identified green consumers on the basis that they have 'consciously chosen one product over another for environmental reasons - specifically because of environmentally friendly packaging, formulation or advertising' (Mclntosh 1991, 208). A number of questions are left open. What did they believe to be an environmental reason? Some ecologists insist that only a product that has passed a so-called cradle to grave environmental audit can be said to be authentically ecofriendly. But on the other hand, could the judgment, as indicated, be made on the basis of vague wording on a label, such as 'environmentally friendly?' The contents of the product may be toxic, and it may not be recyclable, reusable, or degradable. But it may have a biodegradable paper label and hence claim to be 'environmentally friendly/ since most countries did not have legislation and standard definitions for the (by now jargonistic) claims of green consumerism that products are degradable, recyclable, non-polluting, ozone-friendly, and so on. The point is that green consumerism is an act of faith. In other words, the act is not arbitrary; it is based on a belief about the way the world works. Because of this cultural component, a definition of green consumerism cannot be limited to the description of an act. The purpose here is to broaden the understanding of green consumerism (and hence consumerism per se) by situating it within its enabling matrix. Consumerism is not simply a capitalist plot; it is a crucial component of productivism as a belief system, at the same time, it is legitimized by that discourse. In this way, we can understand it as a political act in the same way we can speak of environmental politics. The ecosystem is not prima facie a political sphere. Yet its political character seems quite clear to us now. As discussed in chapter i, green consumerism as a social myth takes its imperative from the narrative promise of resolution. It does so by 'green washing' that existing matrix of discourses that is productivism. Thus, it adjusts to include the challenge to its expansionistic ethic, rather than suffering a fatal blow to its logics. It must be emphasized that this is not a description of actual events: individuals do not consciously engage in such thought, and they do not always simply passively absorb green

9O The Myth of Green Marketing consumerist messages. That is, consumers are not simply manipulated into believing a falsehood; rather, they accept the message of green marketing as having apparently 'common sense' merit. We must examine how a radical message becomes domesticated in this process. I offer a story to think with, the goal of which is to illustrate the complexity of consumption, to see it as integrally woven into our world view. Thus, campaigns to reduce and reshape consumption norms must go beyond the simplistic slogan of 'just say no/ It is not easy to delineate what actually constitutes green consumerism. There are likely very few completely benign products or practices. As Timothy Luke illustrates, recycling, a much touted green activity, is not without problems (1993). In any case, the lines between acts and intentions are blurred. It is difficult even to decide whether focus should be on the isolated act, integrated marketing campaigns, overall pattern of consumption, or ecological consequences. There is also a certain degree of overlap between environmentally 'friendly' products and those claiming to be healthful. Some claims (such as naturalness) may be trading on both concerns at the same time. This could apply to products such as water filters, bicycles, additive-free foods, as well as organic garden fertilizers, and to services such as naturopathic medicine. There are also industry-wide campaigns, for instance, when the nuclear power industry promotes the fact that it does not produce acid rain. Another underexamined manifestation of green consumerism is product design. Stuart Walker connects happiness and responsible consumerism. He does so through the aesthetic of product design. One way to reduce consumption is to encourage demand for an aesthetic of quality, simplicity, and adaptability. He gives several examples of household products that emphasize peace and quiet (because they are manual), are visually pleasing (because they take pleasure in the simple elegance of line and form rather than glitz), and exhibit an attractive timelessness (because they are built to last of solid materials) (Walker 1994, 90-1). Like Maria Mies, he believes that we cannot simply dispense with the satisfaction we have come to experience through consuming. If we expect people to consume less as a condition of continued existence, then what is lost must be replaced with a different version of happiness (Mies 1993, 254~5)- While both writers accept happiness and emotional well-being as legitimate (as opposed to the ascetic approach of others), both include a large component of wishful thinking. There is nothing wrong with wishing humans were otherwise, but it is unclear how one changes the aesthetic of the mythic

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promise the West has grown up under and promoted throughout the world. Although environmental consumption manifests itself in a number of ways, these elements refer to and resonate with one another. Individual advertisements, scientists interviewed on the radio, news reports, official statements from experts, and other examples all relate in a coherent way. This intertextuality constitutes the social myth. The myth is a synthesis, not an aggregate of categories; no one particular expression is likely, by itself, to interpolate a consumer. But each contact with manifestations of the myth (ads, news reports, etc.) evokes and reinforces the economic, political, and social discourses that form the weave of its coherence. Thus, if one is susceptible to its promise, it is the subtle, everyday, minute (but constant and largely invisible) repetition that is important. It is likely, however, that depending on the individual, some forms of green consumerism may be more effective than others. Not all consumers find the same voices authoritative and convincing, but as this argument is more concerned with how the myth may be effective to many ordinary people, the forms of most interest to us are those in the popular realm. Notice that this approach bears no resemblance to the contagion thesis popularized in the eighteenth century and still a common assumption, as we shall see later. One of the most visible forms of green consumerism is exhibited in product claims. They appear in advertising, label information, packaging and environmental seals of approval, for example, and are concerned with issues such as non-toxicity, recycleability, component resources, and effects on ecosystems. The sources of these forms of green consumerism are usually producers and the marketing/advertising industries as they respond to consumer demand, understood through the close watch of marketers. Groups such as Friends of the Earth have also contributed, however, by publishing handbooks containing product information and brand names to guide consumers. For this reason, one may consider information handbooks a separate category through which the green consumerist myth manifests itself. In the popular discourse of green consumerism, such publications are directly aimed at encouraging people to change their consumption habits for the long-term benefit of the global ecosystem, rather than the short-term gains of business. This distinction is worth mentioning because different individuals trust certain voices over others. For some, business and industry have the final word in the marketplace. On the other hand, many consumers can be quite cynical in their approach to

92 The Myth of Green Marketing the claims of business and will listen only to those who have no apparent personal or corporate stake in promoting green consumerism. One final example of green consumerist discourse is public relations advertising campaigns designed to improve the corporate or industry image of some of the big polluters, such as oil companies or those who have been the subject of high-profile attacks, owing to dirty environmental practices. Much of what can be included within the scope of green consumerism is more often termed public relations. In an article in Management Review Carolyn Cranston refers to a survey of marketing executives, which reports that the response of business to the ecological crisis would be to protect corporate image (1990, 38). This aspect of the myth usually does not deal with a specific product. It is important to note, however, that it reinforces the place of particular industries in modern life. At the same time, it signifies them as being within the environmentalist club. As advertisements from IBM and Shell Oil will illustrate, this aspect of green consumerism can be very subtle. It is the everyday repetition of apparently innocuous encounters with green consumerisms in such forms that maintains the invisibility of productivism as well as its hegemonic activities by reasserting the leadership role of commerce and industry. Because of its coherency and systemic character, however, public relations advertising connects a number of relevant issues. They include the epistemelogical authority of science and technology, the importance of moral and intellectual leadership, the economic guardianship of business and industry, and concern for the environment (broadly interpreted), among others. Consequently, this form of green consumerism is particularly useful in exploring the interweaving of discourses in the role of myth as hegemonic suture. It is not possible to ascertain the actual effect of each particular form labelling, advertising, and so on - on consumers. As noted below, studies are aimed more at determining the numbers of individuals interested in purchasing less environmentally damaging products. A certain amount of scepticism among consumers has developed, however, as the claims of producers have become more extensive and begun to permeate industries having no clear connection to the environmental crisis. The imperative of green consumerism centres on shoppers' perceptions and intentions. The literature discussing green consumerism is full of poll data. There seems to be consensus on one issue: people perceive that there is a global environmental problem and they want to do something about it. Whether one looks at Britain, Canada, the European

Green Consumerism 93 Community, Australia, or the United States, this perception is consistent. As it is not possible for consumers to have full information regarding ecological impact of many products, most shoppers rely heavily on advertising, labelling, popular media, and word of mouth to become informed regarding product impact on the ecological system. Consequently, in this discussion of green consumerism as social myth, we should not get too sidetracked into identifying the scientific proof of marketing claims. It is important to affirm here, however, that green consumers believe (a) that there is a legitimate ecological problem; (b) that it must be dealt with in an active way or something catastrophic will happen; (c) that they are acquiring the necessary information on the crisis within their everyday lives; and (d) that each individual can and ought to make a contribution to saving the planet from serious disaster. None the less, there are writers who would possibly find this account of the green consumer vague and irresponsible, or, in the words of John Button in How to Be Green, 'Green consumerism means much more than just changing products. It means questioning both the nature and the volume of consumption. It means reassessing our role as individuals in reinforcing or transforming the fundamental inequalities in today's world economy. And it means challenging politicians to create a policy framework that will encourage more people to adopt a greener lifestyle' (1989, 9). If only it were so. This is one of the more optimistic opinions regarding green consumerism within the environmental movement, although it was likely written more as prescription than as description. Maria Mies writes in the same vein, 'People must begin to realize that less is more, by defining what constitutes an alternative "good life/" This new version of the good life would emphasize values such as 'cooperation, diversity, communality/ and 'creativity' instead of 'competitiveness, aggressive self-interest and "catching up with the Joneses'" (Mies 1993, 254). (Is this 'catching' contagion or emulation? We can see how synthesized and invisible those eighteenth-century principles have become.) Because critical discourses regarding the environment are more available now than they were in the past, it is possible that increasing numbers of people may develop the ability to see the connections between their decisions as consumers and the expansionistic, exploitative economic model of consumption-centred economics. Negative evaluations of the consumer society are not new, however, and simply because critical points of view are available, they will not necessarily be privileged

94 The Myth of Green Marketing over the more immediate rewards of Pride, Envy, Avarice, and Gluttony. While Mies argues for admirable values, to wish that the subjects of twentieth-century late capitalism were other than the dutiful subjects of the reality they inhabit is not helpful in strategizing for practical resistance. In any case, adopting a greener lifestyle (in Button's words) only perpetuates the problem, that is, a lifestyle that those in the North enjoy at the expense of the world's poor and the physical environment. As we can see, it is difficult to attempt to define green consumerism because different writers have competing perspectives and agendas. Some focus on the consumer as (potential) political actor. Marketers view the issue from a different place and with a different agenda. Each has a particular set of expectations from the consumer and from green consumerism. Those environmentalists who see green consumerism as a legitimate political activity in the move towards sustainable community downplay any mention of sacrifice. The enormously popular The Green Consumer Guide by Elkington and Hailes, for example, claims 'not to promote a "hair-shirt" lifestyle/ The Guide was composed to attract a 'sandals-toSaabs' range of consumers. The intention was 'to ensure that, whatever your lifestyle, you will know where to find attractive, cost-competitive products and services which are environmentally acceptable/ In case one may confuse this rhetoric with ordinary advertising copy, however, a few pages later the authors agree that it is 'absolutely right' to call on people to live simply' (1988, i, 4). From a business point of view, green consumerism is defined as a marketing opportunity. Simple living would be bad for business. Indeed, anything counter-consumptive would be counter-productive. Some industrialists in the late 19805 suggested that possibly the demand for environmentally benign products was a fad and did not merit large financial outlay in order to ensure structural and commodity shifts. By the early 19905, however, attitudes had changed among marketers and many of their clients. The two most frequent topics in the business literature on green consumerism were profit and public relations. To phrase it simply, one person's 'small awakening' to the ecological crisis is another person's 'market opportunity/ Marketing and advertising trade magazines covered green consumerism frequently. On 29 January 1991 Advertising Age held a Green Marketing Summit in New York. More than 400 people from corporations, media, advertising agencies, government, and the environmental movement attended. The purpose was to 'help marketers sort out opportunities for growth and progress

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in environmental marketing7 (Dagnoli 1991,12). No doubt many people in business are sincerely concerned about ecological degradation. Even so, there did seem to be a tendency to focus on how the environment could help marketers, rather than on what business could do for the environment. The profits are considerable. The Body Shop continued to expand and increase sales right through a recession, without discounting their prices or advertising. In May 1989 Loblaws, a Canadian supermarket chain, announced its 'green line' of environmentally safer products. In one month it sold $5 million (Canadian) worth of goods in three weeks. By 1989 in the United States there was over U.S.$5OO billion on deposit in socially and ethically screened investment funds (Sutter 1989; Adams 1990, 83). As in the case of the 'green summit/ much of this information was couched in terms of 'market opportunities/ 'competitive advantage' and 'net benefit over the competition' (Vandermerwe and Oliff 1990,15-16; Barrett 1991,12). Closely connected with profitability is credibility. It must be remembered that the latter is largely a question of perception. Professional marketers emphasize that if profits are to be acquired through environmental marketing, the company must be perceived to be sincere and have real commitment to the issue. Bluntly stated, 'Ecobabble won't sell' (Ross 1990, 25). Such credibility can be accomplished in a number of ways. Some of the most common are sponsorship for various environmentally related good causes (Stewart 1991, 42-3; Jay 1990, 26); cleaning up the corporate house by recycling, changing to recycled paper products, and using ceramic coffee mugs (Ross 1990, 25; Business Week 1990); and cooperating with government, consumers' associations, and environmental groups to establish regulations (Barrett 1991, 7). Whatever form the activity, the utmost public kudos must be squeezed from it. A survey of marketing executives conducted in 1990 states, 'the vast majority agreed that business must respond to the growing ecological crisis, but admitted that most companies would frame the problem in terms of public relations, corporate image, and packaging' (Cranston 1990, 38). Notice the stranglehold that consumption as a concept has on the imagination. In spite of an awareness that people are concerned about their purchases because of the environmental consequences, a view of consumption as destruction (the pre-eighteenth-century definition associated with mercantilist economics) is unthinkable. Clearly, the circulation of money is more important than the circulation of toxins. At the

96 The Myth of Green Marketing same time, these marketers are not relying on emulation and contagion as primary agents of their message. Advertisers also believe that they must present the consumer with a sales pitch cloaked in the rhetoric of reason and the public good. There is nothing new about the political use of consumer power. Arguments of what 'political' means aside, it is difficult to locate exactly when the greened variety of consumption joined that tradition. There even seems to be some disagreement over which side of the environmental cold war the strategy emerged from. Both industrial strategists and environmental strategists claim it as their own. According to Sandy Irvine, green consumerism gained importance in the late 19805, when news coverage of ozone damage and global warming began to appear more consistently in the media, and the publication of popular handbooks gave consumers a way to respond at a personal level. Irvine specifically dates 'green consumerism' from 1988 with the popularization of the term. In that year, The Green Consumer Guide was published and quickly became a bestseller. Other publications followed, which helped to shape demand for more benign products of all kinds. Companies such as Ecover, an early entry in the green marketplace, soon found themselves in competition with 'green lines' from major manufacturers and advertisers. Green consumerism was clearly emerging before 1988. According to Irvine, Friends of the Earth was campaigning in the 19708 against wasteful packaging, the import of wild-animal skins, and whaling (1989, 6). Similar campaigns by organizations such as Greenpeace also are well known. In May 1987 SustainAbility, a British company formed to encourage green consumerism, and the New Economics Foundation held a workshop on green consumerism in London. Friends of the Earth began developing and promoting the idea, using the threat of boycott as an effective weapon. Its anti-CFC campaign is the best known, but it also helped to convince Coca Cola to abandon plans to destroy 30,000 acres of tropical rain forests in Belize (Porritt and Winner 1988, 192; Irvine 1989, 6). The Green Consumer Guide was a response to an apparent readiness among the general population for a shift in consumption habits if it would help to solve the environmental crisis. Those working on the Guide first sent questionnaires to environmental groups asking if they felt the consumer could play a major role in tackling the problem; 87 per cent of those who answered said yes. Related public opinion data rein-

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forced that response. In 1986 Which magazine surveyed its readers; 90 per cent said they were worried about pollution and the environment (Elkington and Hailes 1988, i, 11). Statistics from the European Commission confirm this trend; 78 per cent of those polled in 1989 believed that protecting the environment and fighting pollution formed the number one problem facing the European Community. The impact of this concern has been registered in the marketplace. According to one survey in 1988 in Britain, 19 per cent of those asked were green consumers (using the definition discussed at the beginning of this chapter). In 1989 this figure had risen to 42 per cent (Mclntosh 1991, 206-7, 2°9)- m the United States a similar trend has been recorded. A Good Housekeeping readership poll in 1989 revealed that almost 60 per cent were very or extremely interested in buying environmentally safe packaging, with 23.9 per cent being somewhat interested and only 16 per cent uninterested. Over 77 per cent were willing to pay more for it (Jay 1990, 25; Sandilands 1993, 45). Green consumerism is a site of political struggle. From the point of view of some green activists, it provides a political opportunity to educate, motivate, and galvanize individuals into a mass ecological movement. From the point of view of industry and marketers, the general fear of an ecological crisis and a public willingness to act constitute a business opportunity. This is not to suggest that there is a clear division between green marketers and green activists. Publications such as Elkington and Burke's The Green Capitalists (1987), which emphasize compatibility between expansionistic enterprise and the goals of ecologism, illustrate the complex and confused nature of this issue. Popular Discourse Growing consciousness of the planet as one ecological system, rather than as a human-centred world, has a number of fronts. At the level of science and technology significant advances at the end of the 19805 allowed for an international scientific consensus with global credibility and legitimacy to begin to form around two central issues: global warming and ozone depletion. The scope and serious nature of these discoveries heralded an end to the image of the ecologist as hippie weirdo and dweller in the lunatic fringe. Legitimate as this esoteric and advanced science now may be, it is still irrelevant and unimaginable to the average citizen. As well, at both the domestic and the international level, there have been any number of

98 The Myth of Green Marketing political protocols, accords, and a great deal of rhetoric around achieving negotiated agreements to fight atmospheric deterioration. This activity, too, is outside the everyday understanding and interest of 'ordinary' people. It is clear from the polls mentioned above that, although sophisticated and detailed scientific and political information does not frequently make its way into our kitchens, radios, televisions, newspapers, and magazines do. Green consumerism is a popular discourse. It takes place in the realm of the ordinary and everyday: conversations on the bus, advertising, graphic design, fast-food wrappings, arguments at the dinner table, billboards, Hollywood movies, the workplace, and so forth. In 1990-1 it was impossible to avoid the issue of green consumerism, unlike that of actual ecological deterioration, which continues to appear as a threat rather than a reality to masses of people in the North. Perhaps because familiarity breeds contempt, or perhaps because consumerism per se has so easily been dismissed as irrational or immoral by the deep ecological critique of expansionistic economics, cultural analyses of green consumerism have been few. Or perhaps this oversight is a function of the base/superstructure legacy of Marx. Historically, mass consumption has been associated with capitalism, and the best known and most profound critiques of capitalism have emerged from a Marxist tradition. Marxist analyses are usually grounded in economics. True, there is a powerful history of Marxist cultural analysis, but little of it bears obvious relevance for consumerism, which is left primarily to the economists to sort out. But it is exactly its ordinaryeverydayness that makes consumerism such an effective and innocent vehicle for the transmission of social norms. As a popular discourse, green consumerism is easily available within the community. The electronic and print media are the sources of most consumer information on the environment (Dagnoli 1991), and this kind of information also is available in community libraries. The material within which environmentally responsible shopping ideas and information are circulated is multiform. There are a number of green shopping guides, some of which have already been mentioned. Typically, standard ecological issues, such as global warming, water, air, and land pollution, are catalogued. We then are reminded that, as Jonathan Porritt phrases it, living is polluting' (Button 1989, 8), after which we are invited to contribute to a grand clean-up by changing our personal habits and encouraging the production of environmentally benign products over destructive ones through shopping green. The most thorough of

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these manuals give advice on actions such as how to reduce energy and water consumption in the home, as well as providing brand names of the safest purchases. The Green Consumer Guide: From Shampoo to Champagne: Highstreet Shopping for a Better World by Elkington and Hailes is both thorough and popular. It was first published in September 1988; by October 1988 it had received its fifth impression. Manuals such as Friends of the Earth Handbook (Porritt 1987), How to Be Green (Button 1989), and Blueprint for a Green Planet (Seymour and Girardet 1987) are also typical texts in this attempt at mass mobilization. In the United States the following books were published: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth (Earth Works Group 1989), Hints for a Healthy Planet (Heloise 1990), and The Green Lifestyle Handbook: 1001 Ways You Can Heal the Earth (Rifkin, 1990) (titles listed in Luke 1993, 171-2). They popularize the issues and the solutions in accessible language and form. Some are more specific, such as The Good Wood Guide, The Aerosol Connection (both from Friends of the Earth), and Mark Gold's Living without Cruelty. As well as green shopping guides and information handbooks, other vehicles that contribute to the development of a green consumerist discourse are the popular media. Some mass circulation periodicals, such as the Observer and Good Housekeeping, carried regular columns or features (Irvine 1989, 5-6). There are also specialist magazines, such as New Consumer (Adams 1990, 81). Campaigns provide another vehicle of popularization. Big operations, such as those mounted by Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace regarding, for example, endangered species or CFC elimination, are conducted on an international scale. But there are also many important small campaigns at the local level, such as those to clean up the estuaries and create cycle routes. This constant resistance reinforces the perpetual message that the environment is deteriorating and we all must 'do our bit' to clean it up. The international seriousness of the environmental crisis, the highprofile coverage of meetings like the Rio Earth Summit combined with the constant barrage of environmentally related media attention at the level of the popular resonate together to establish a context that normalizes and naturalizes the claims of green consumerist discourse. Consequently, trivia, such as matchbook covers, T-shirts, fliers through the mail slot, milk cartons, shopping bags, baseball caps, as well as packaging claims, are quite unremarkable. It is important to note that there is considerable literature on the topic in the fields of marketing and advertising. These disciplines best typify

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and shape the public image of green consumerism. Even though the consumer guides and handbooks are easily available in bookshops and public libraries, it is these professional commodity promoters that give image and form to the narrative of green consumerism as a social myth. But first let us consider the ecological debate and situate the dominant positions regarding green consumerism within the movement. Environmental Debate on Green Consumerism As the above discussions suggest, there is no unified position within the environmental movement on the topic of green consumerism. There is debate, which for the most part polarizes along a useful/useless axis. Those who believe green consumerism has some merit make the following arguments. Some accept (or in any case choose not to reject) the existing expansionistic economic model that has come to dominate internationally. The compatibility between business and environmentalism referred to earlier embraces enterprise as part of the solution. This is because it is helping to reshape the market, clean up its toxic culture, and create new ideas to achieve sustainable development. Indeed, Elkington and Burke suggest that there is something inherent in capitalist entrepreneurialism itself that makes it better than state planning for cleaning up the environment (1987,15-17).l Another reason some groups within the ecological movement support green consumerism is that they believe it to be a point of entry for individuals into a deeper understanding, possibly leading to a more radical commitment. Or, in Dobson's words, a 'personal transformation of consciousness leads to altered individual behaviour' (1990, 140). As an everyday act available to all, it is potentially a very subversive moment of empowerment. For activists, from this point of view it is possible for individuals to be aggregated in the name of voluntary commitment. The marketplace is not a Mixmaster where personal autonomy and identity are necessarily ground up in the pablum of false consciousness. (This is, of course, exactly what advertisers tell us is true, but more of that later.) Consider the following. 'We have free will. We are responsible. We have been provided with the eyes and ears to know what is happening. We have been provided with intelligence and intuition to make sense of this information. We have been provided with a sense of responsibility. We have been provided with free will for good or for ill. And we have been provided with the power to act - the power to save or to destroy, to ruin

Green Consumerism 101 or to enhance or to husband. We have no excuse for not acting7 (Seymour and Girardet 1987, 7). Yet we do not do so. I find this passage particularly compelling; indeed, my enquiries begin where it leaves off. But let us consider the language and presumptions here. Three points may be drawn from the above quote that broadly encapsulate the positive side of green consumerism. This passage conveys its urgency through its clear, strong, active vocabulary and through repetition. The message is relentless and encourages readers to empower themselves by exercising their own good sense and will-power. First, notice the emphasis on knowledge and intelligence. The 'eyes and ears' gather 'information/ This is 'made sense' of by applying our 'intelligence' and 'intuition' (note that intelligence and intuition are given the same weight here). We are now in a position to 'know/ Second, we are provided with 'free will' (a phrase used twice within six sentences), 'a sense of responsibility/ and the 'power to act/ three components necessary to ensure moral action. Goodin, remember, asserts that a green theory of action will be precipitated by a green theory of value. The responsibility is in relation to that theory of value. This passage rhetorically presents 'good or ... ill/ 'save or ... destroy/ 'ruin or ... husband/ as though they were choices. But for a component like the human animal in an interdependent ecosystem, it would be illogical for responsibility and value to lie in the 'ill' direction of destroy and ruin. So why waste effort on rhetorical choices? Perhaps because, as a species, we have done exactly that: taken the direction of destroy and ruin. The moral issues are assumed to be obvious by the authors. They go on to dismiss any discussion of ethics, 'Moral arguments aside/ They say it is beyond question that we must save the planet: The morals are not in question/ anything else is 'squalid and deplorable' (9). Well yes, on the face of it, this point may seem quite straightforward, but that is not the level at which disagreements tend to happen. Who should be allowed to own a private car? How many people should live in a house? Ought one be allowed to keep a pet? Who will pay for potable water in Burkina Faso, or the clean-up of abandoned toxic waste dumps? A thousand difficult questions come to mind. A handbook is possibly not the place to tackle the convoluted arguments of an ethical quagmire. Nevertheless, if one intends to argue against the grain of history, the ethical is unavoidable. As I have been contending, expansionistic development ethics in the formative years of productivist discourse squeezed out the dystopian side of industrial and economic development, that is, the destructive,

1O2 The Myth of Green Marketing fouling aspects of it. Like consumption, productivism took on an aura of public good. In the 19805 and 19905 we have seen the ascendancy of neoliberal economics grow to the point where business and industry are firmly lodged as beholders of the public good. The governments of a number of powerful western nations continually make policies that favour this sector of society because, they assure us, from a strong capitalist economic base will flow the fulfilment of productivism's promises of the good life. Whether or not citizens have free will, where is the opportunity to engage with this corporatist bloc? It is not surprising that many people feel unempowered and irrelevant, or that the ecological crisis we find ourselves facing in the late twentieth century has been the unintended consequence of 250 years of civic passivity. This brings us to the third point. There is a great sense of urgency and incitement in the passage; this is its function. Information is not catalogued nor is practical advice given (they appear later in the book). The phrase 'we have' is used in all but one sentence, and 'we have been provided' is repeated in five out of eight sentences. The sentences, with their repetitive drone, read like a Gregorian chant. It seems that we have an inherent human capacity to end the crisis. We have always had it. There is no question that we ordinary people are without the scientific data, political power, social organization, or cultural habits to do anything. We now have and always have had the 'intelligence,' 'intuition/ 'free will/ 'power/ and 'responsibility' to 'act/ The authors leave us no refuge and insist that there is 'no excuse for not acting/ Note that all but one sentence begins with 'we/ This usage refers back to the last point and the questions of passivity and unintended consequences. The above quotation insists that 'we' are responsible. It disallows our claims of ignorance and apathy. Seymour and Girardet have a point. Significant social change has occurred through human will and action. Those in the North have enjoyed an increasing standard of living over decades and centuries. This affluence was constructed in large part out of the exploitation and misfortune of others in the colonial world. I am sure that to many the slave trade seemed like a necessary component of world economic development. It seems barbaric to us now. But the slave trade was stopped only after concerted campaigns and there has never been a large-scale revulsion of the whole colonial experience. As well, universal suffrage has emerged from a history of violent struggle. Likewise, those who, throughout the history of the industrialized North, have attempted to sound the alarm regarding possible consequences of productivist ethics and behaviours have been silenced, marginalized, or

Green Consumerism 103 ignored. It is not unlikely that our increasingly more formalized and managed electoral system, polarized world, growing cultural homogenization, and impending ecological disaster are the unintended consequences of our passivity. The message is clear in the passage from Seymour and Girardet (1987), with its action verbs, staccato of simple sentences, use of the present tense to indicate possession, and repetition of key concepts - know, will, act. For those who believe that green consumerism can be a vehicle for change, however, the goal is to inspire and empower the individual to make decisions that go against the force of 200 years of history. These decisions will be aggregated into a mass movement for change: 'It's down to each and every one of us to do our bit7 (Button 1989,8). Porritt concurs. Two things must happen, he writes; one is that we must accept personal responsibility for our actions, and the other is that this acceptance must be set within the context of collective action (1987, 5, 8). From this point of view, green consumerism can be seen as a good thing; it can act as what Button calls 'a small awakening' (1989, 9). That is, if one were to understand the purchase of a product claiming to be environmentally benign solely as a discrete act with no presumptions or context, it truly would seem absurd. But that is not the case. This act is embedded in a historically specific and significant intersection of social, political, economic, and scientific discourses about the environment, which cause it to have a resonance it would not have had even fifteen years ago. Macintosh supports this idea when he writes that the major political consequence of green consumerism is not necessarily support for 'green' political parties. Its political impact is more in the significant increase in membership, lobbying activities, and public campaigning of bodies devoted to environmental issues (1991, 209). Many of those who promote or support green consumerism see it as being only one part in an ongoing and complex struggle. When someone makes the decision to buy green, she acknowledges that there is a problem and that ordinary people can contribute to a solution - a significant step to take. No movement that aspires to have popular support can afford to dismiss that act as trivial. Even such a small gesture signifies responsibility and empowerment, and those who support green consumerism may do so more for pragmatic and strategic reasons than for environmental reasons, even if 'some individuals do indeed end up living sounder, more ecological lives' (Dobson 1990, 141). In any case, within the ecological movement there are those who support environmentally responsible shopping as a legitimate and positive activity.

104 The Myth of Green Marketing On the other hand, many also within the environmental movement have argued exactly the opposite viewpoint. Green consumerism, they contend, is a substitute for action; it is only more empty bourgeois individualism. The problems are structural. Our efforts should go towards transforming political and economic networks on a national and global scale. 'Pragmatic environmentalists/ writes Murray Bookchin, 'often create the dangerous illusion that the present order is capable of rectifying its own abuses' (1989, 160). Green consumerism leaves long-term structures still intact. In fact, one may argue that green consumerism directly reinforces an expansionistic economy because it continues to support and actively promote consumption. As we saw in chapter 3, many ecologists view consumption as inextricably bound up with expansionism, given that the dynamic of consume is always to destroy, exhaust, erode: 'Green consuming is still consuming, which is the fundamental paradox' (Dadd and Carothers 1990, 12). Less consumption, not different consumption, is required: 'The real problem is the sheer volume of energy and material "throughput" in the economy. ... a truly green consumer would be asking first ... "do I really need all these things?"' (Irvine 1989, 14, 24). This side of the debate doubts whether the consumer is ever empowered. As it is not possible to answer that question, it may be more instructive to ask why some believe consuming can be an act of empowerment and others do not. To marketers and anyone else interested in perpetuating a consumer-centred economic system, it is appropriate to view the consumer as a chooser open to suggestion and persuasion. To anyone who sees capitalist growth and environmental destruction as symbiotic, the consumer is empowered (manipulated) only to contribute to a dead planet. Timothy Luke describes the idea of consumer empowerment as a tactic to shift culpability from corporations to individuals: 'In an ideological turnaround ... the discourse of blame began to include individual consumers ... [T]he rhetoric of ecological responsibility slowly shifted from a vernacular of "Big business is dirty business" to dialects of "Factories don't pollute. People do"' (1993, 156). This privatization of the Apocalypse feeds on any latent guilt and responsibility consumers may feel regarding the production of waste and garbage in their lives. People are thus encouraged to make petty shopping decisions as though doing penance for past environmental indiscretions. In Luke's words (using language from a handbook), 'Like ecological destruction itself, ecological salvation is possible "without effort" and "with very little thought."'

Green Consumerism 105 Meanwhile, the big corporate polluters are carrying on as usual and hiring copywriters to report how the folks at corporate headquarters now use ceramic coffee mugs and recycled copy paper. Luke, writing about recycling as a form of green consumerism, notes that instead of encouraging reduction, it 'revalorizes the basic premises of material consumption and massive waste' (Luke 1993, 164, 170). Notice how many of the eighteenth-century ideas discussed in chapter 2 come back to us in the empowerment debate. That ordinary citizens may be empowered is a notion that evokes the democratic associations of social levelling. Remember the eighteenth-century aristocratic fear that servants would come to believe they were on an equal basis with their masters. It seems that being equal has its problems, and the democratization of blame is one of them; this is the downside of social levelling. As well, if mere contagion were the dynamic of social change, it would not be necessary to persuade consumers through logical-sounding language, scientific argument, and allusions to moral duty. Other questions can be asked of even so-called environmentally safe products. Whether the product quality is high, whether it is necessary, whether it has been designed to be repaired, and whether it can stand up to maximum reuse are only a few questions to ask of productivism. Other questions that arise are: should we insist on increased production efficiency of what must be produced, can we demand the dismantling of wasteful production, and how much is 'enough7? (Irvine and Ponton 1988, 29). In other words, 'Complete thermodynamic and ecological bills are not being kept in the accounts of green consumerism' (Irvine 1989,

23).

From the critical point of view, other things also get left out of green consumerism. The issue of distributive justice is one. People in poor countries pay the price for our affluent, relatively clean lifestyles, and green consumerism is yet another of our luxuries that the poor of the world pay for. Thus, while it may have its place, 'Green consumerism leaves totally unanswered the basic questions about global equality and the chronic poverty and suffering of millions of people in the Third World' (Irvine 1989, 4, 18). The Friends of the Earth Handbook connects famine, desertification, rain forest depletion, erosion of grasslands and croplands, economic damage through arms spending, rising population, acid rain, and other issues that plague poor countries. None of them is affected through shopping green in the North. Our standard of living and volume of consumption connect us to the 'suffering in Africa' (Porritt 1987, 4-5). The issue of distributive justice is an important one and

106 The Myth of Green Marketing goes right to the heart of European and colonial history. The exploitation or cooptation of people in poor areas of the world, indigenous peoples, and women has facilitated the industrialization of the North. Colonialism was a major factor in ensuring the dominance of productivist hegemony. The acquisition of cheap labour and resources along with the development of new markets in the colonies supported the rapid growth of industrialization of Europe. A view of the world as a marketplace full of potential consumers, remember, was a radical shift from the mercantilist economic vision prevalent before the eighteenth century. While poor nations have not shared fairly in the wealth created at their expense, it is not distribution that concerns me here. In any case, it seems that most poor nations want to join the herd. They do not want to end productivism; they want expansionism to expand to them. I am focusing on the expansionist conceptual heart of productivism, not its material history, questionable as the latter may be. If distribution had been fair, I would still be making the same argument. Indeed as Maria Mies states, The strategy of catching-up development is not the solution, it is the problem' (Mies 1993, 253). If distribution had been equal, we would have reached the crisis sooner, not avoided it. Some manufacturers, such as Ecover, Body Shop, or Seventh Generation, and traders, such as Traidcraft and Cultural Survival Enterprises, have tried to address the issues of fair trading. Anita Roddick of Body Shop fame writes in the Introduction' to The Green Consuming Guide, 'We are now all concerned with effects of what we are doing, on the local environment, on people in the Third World and planet. People want to know how these things are made, where and by whom' (Elkington and Hailes 1988, ix). Who is 'we'? Given the explosive success of her transnational company, one can appreciate that Roddick may feel as though the global village has manifested itself with full knowledge and good intentions. In the wider context, however, these few producers and traders can make only small gestures in relation to the total volume of world production. Many who argue against green consumerism follow the same line as the more general anti-expansionistic critiques of deep ecology. As we can see, however, the green consumer debate is also more specific. The issues of manipulation and false consciousness are important points to address because, as Bookchin would assert, the danger is in losing people who might otherwise be interpolated into a more radical understanding of the ecological crisis. They become innocently sidetracked into a non-critical activity that fundamentally is simply more of the same.

Green Consumerism 107 One does not have to read far to come to such cynical conclusions. The following words were spoken by a Mobil Chemicals executive: 'Mobil has concluded that biodegradable plastics will not help solve the solid waste problem ... We do, however, see that there are some shortterm public relations gains in switching to a photodegradable plastic grocery sack or consumer trash bag, or even a biodegradable bag of each type. And it's that public relations value that has to be considered as opposed to real solutions to the problem/ The following statement was made by an official prosecuting Mobil for deceptive advertising and consumer fraud: There is something utterly irresponsible about a company that has publicly said that biodegradation is not good for the environment but then turns around and tries to make a buck off it anyway/ 2 The latter quote perhaps typifies the attitude of deep ecologists towards business. Both Button and Irvine, for example, fear that the consumer is being conned into thinking everything is all right (Button 1989, 3; Irvine 1989). There may be some evidence to suggest that this belief is true. In 1991 Julia Langer, executive director of Friends of the Earth, Canada, reported that a recent poll showed that Canadians believe the environment is improving. She attributes this optimism to 'glitzy' advertisements promoting green consumerism (Lesh 1991), an argument partly supported by Davis (1992, 82), who suggests that people may become cynical and not buy green if the claims are too specious, or, if they do believe manufacturers' assertions, people will believe that the environmental crisis has been solved. The 'con/ then, is twofold. First, the consumer is led to believe that his individual use of lead-free gasoline or a benign soap powder will actually affect the ecological crisis. Consumers are lulled into complacency by the mistaken belief that they are actually doing something. Second, people see the solution to the environmental crisis as personal action, thus deflecting them from targeting large power elites and structural issues. The shift in blame centres responsibility directly onto households. Some see this change as an opportunity for women to reshape consumption. Maria Mies gives the example of the Seikatsu Club in Japan: founded by women in the wake of the Minamata disaster, the club focuses its buying power to encourage the development of organic and ecological farming. By 1989 the club had a membership of 170,000, and 80 per cent of the Board of Directors were women (Mies 1993, 260). Others, however, believe this shift of responsibility from systems to individuals is a way of blaming, while disempowering, women. Mellor

io8 The Myth of Green Marketing complains that because 87 per cent of shoppers are women, consumption should be a site of environmental activism for women, but it is not. The problem is that there is no political focus. Like many activists, she believes it is important to stop the market functioning, and no colour of buying is going to do that (Mellor 1992, 191-3). Catriona Sandilands agrees. Because green consumerism does not really challenge productivism and capitalist expansionism, she considers it non-political: In this process by which "the environment" becomes a question of lifestyle, it becomes depoliticized' (1993, 46). In fact, nothing could be more political. It is not ironic to suggest that green consumerism has not "become" depoliticized; depoliticization was the purpose from the outset. But the subversion of and resistance to social change is as political as the fulfilment of social change. Agreeing with Luke, Sandilands writes, The privatization of environmental change shifts the burden onto individuals and households, and away from states, corporations, and global arrangements' (1993, 46). Yet economic and political powerholders have been making decisions for more than 200 years. That this criminal record (environmentally speaking) can be erased and reassigned to homemakers is quite absurd. In context, however, the revival of neo-liberal political and economic ideology in the 19805 and 19905 means that individualistic answers are more likely to receive a hearing today than in previous decades. This fact facilitates the shift Luke and Sandilands describe. Because most households are the responsibility of women, they become the focus for criticism from different factions within the environmental movement. Frequently, women are seen as stupid, coopted, or self-centred. Even ecofeminists are less than generous. 'Mothering7 is unfairly used against women, Sandilands suggests; through the honest business of maintaining their families they become the unwitting agents of consumerism and recipients of yet more unpaid household labour (recycling chores, longer meal preparation times) (1993, 46-7). Unfortunately, some of the ecofeminist literature perpetuates the image of women as easily manipulated zombies with a goat-like predilection for shiny objects. There seems to be no shortage of smug psychologistic interpretations of women's behaviour. Maria Mies writes that '[f]or many women in the affluent societies, a "shopping spree" is an attempt to satisfy their need for affection and recognition/ She argues that because of societal focus on their physical appearance, women have low self-esteem and feel unloved. Consequently, they try to compensate for their inadequacies by buying new clothes and cos-

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metics. Mies reminds us, however, that buying a commodity can never fill the void that is woman (in this ideological paradigm) (1993, 255). Likewise, Mellor states that consumption substitutes for a lack of 'owning and controlling' (1992, 182). The obvious substitute here is to own and control commodities, which can never compensate for a lack of real power in the world, and so the cycle of shopping begins again. If this is what many ecofeminists think of women, it is not surprising that advertising executives and marketing managers spend a lot of time trying to manipulate these pathetic creatures with tinsel and mirrors. Sexist, superficial characterizations simply repeat the harmful stereotypes that have been used against women for centuries. This is not rational analysis; it is eighteenth-century born-again Puritanism. Where is the evidence or the argumentation to back up the claims that women are so empty? What is a shopping spree? Why are the gender and class implications of this phrase left unexamined? Are women's purchases focused on their own personal insecurities? Not according to Michael Schudson. He writes convincingly of how women use buying, giving, and trading as vehicles to hold together families and friends. He cites Christmas traditions as an example. Women use an assemblage of rituals (decorating, gift buying, wrapping, cooking, etc.) to reinforce and renew bonds with family and friends: The prevalence of gift giving suggests that people very often buy things not because they are materialistic but because they are social' (Schudson 1984, 139). This thesis is supported by Mary Douglas, who, writing about Marcel Mauss's essay on The Gift, notes, 'A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction' (1992, 155). Elsewhere she writes, 'Instead of supposing that goods are primarily needed for subsistence plus competitive display, let us assume that they are needed for making visible and stable the categories of culture' (1979, 59). Many of the impractical, luxurious things people buy are gifts for others. Advertising is thought to manipulate people into buying useless commodities, but most unnecessary purchases are, in fact, gifts for others, both in our society and in other cultures, even those of indigenous peoples (Schudson 1984,137). When we discard so easily the purchasing activities of women because consumption is a dirty habit associated with capitalism and productivism, we make invisible this important social and cultural strategy of women to unite their families and communities. We also imply that women are not capable of thinking outside the mind manipulation attempted in advertising. This goes against the

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post-eighteenth-century premise of consumption-centred economics that individuals are refinable. The woman in this story is not an untethered goat. She is the perpetuator of valuable social cohesion. What happens to this complex historical and cross-cultural custom if women just say no to buying? The point here is that if we want to be effective in reducing consumerism, we have to stop berating women for being weak and immoral and start a multifaceted cultural analysis of the circulation of goods in our society. Without offering an alternative avenue or vehicle for the fulfilment of these social needs, there is inadequate incentive for women to change their shopping activity. Irvine and Ponton are direct in their critique of the manipulative aspects of consumerist culture. The problem, they say, is that there is an imbalance in access to the 'means of persuasion/ The management of public opinion and consumer spending is monopolized by those with the most money. They carry on at length in this vein, describing how 'advertising dangles ... products before the consumers' eyes, promising satisfaction' (Irvine and Ponton 1988, 62). From this point of view, autonomous choice is lost, or rather it is covered with a false consciousness of apparent lifestyle options. The answer to the environmental crisis, in this vision of green consumerism, is a change in lifestyle - literally style. A change in the habit of consumption is not even thinkable. This image of the duped plebeian is not unfamiliar and has a long tradition. Machiavelli's prince is given considerable advice and much historical evidence regarding the techniques of bread and circuses. George Sorel referred to the embourgeoisment of the masses. This idea (even the term itself) is picked up by Murray Bookchin, as he complains about our 'internalization of hierarchy and domination' (1989, 127; 1986, 121-5). Herbert Marcuse gave us the 'one dimensional man.' The concept is alive and well, especially in environmental writings on consumption, and has not changed significantly since 1964. Such disempowerment of the individual leaves us open to exploitation and manipulation by others, such as advertisers and marketers. Marcuse's concept of one-dimensionality corresponds to embourgeoisment in that it describes the process by which working-class consciousness is reshaped by bourgeois values, beliefs, and desires. The consequence is the depoliticization of the proletariat and the erosion of revolution or significant reform as a class goal. This embourgeoisment does not actually eliminate what are said to be fundamental class antagonisms; it merely renders them invisible. The apparent harmony of interests between labour and

Green Consumerism 111 capital is tied to the promise of a consumer culture and the concept of technological rationality. Marcuse writes, The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood. And as these beneficial products become available to more individuals in more social classes, the indoctrination they carry ceases to be publicity; it becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life much better than before - and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour' (1964,12). Commodities appear to have a life of their own. They work as agents of sinister forces, inhabiting the realm of the ordinary and everyday. This is mind-control of the most absolute and inescapable; there is no joy or use-value in this interpretation. Douglas Kellner makes a general critique of critical theory's approach to consumerism, one aspect being its totalizing theory of commodities and consumption: 'Commodities are pictured as evil tools of class domination and a covert distinction is often made between (bad) exchange-value and (good) use-value. It also assumes a magical power on the part of capital to create unreal false needs which it is then able to manipulate in its own interest/ He also notes that Marcuse believes all consumer needs to be false (Kellner 1983, 71-2). Although I think Kellner perpetuates some of what he criticizes, and I disagree with major parts of his conclusion, his critique does have resonance here. Many environmentalists write in the same vein, and his criticism is usefully extrapolated to them. There is much important work being done in the areas of environmental theory and substantive analysis, but I would now like to turn to some issues where it may be fruitful to expand our theoretical approaches. As I have suggested, most environmentalists writing in the area of consumption seem to view it primarily in two ways, either as a component in an expansionistic economic model or as social manipulation. Either way, unacknowledged assumptions underlie these readings. I believe unexplored presuppositions subvert most attempts to make a critique of green consumerism that goes beyond the constant moralizing and nagging that Arne Naess cautions against. Because these assumptions are much the same as the formations they wish to criticize, in the end, the green consumer critique is tragically functionalist - tragic in that it reinforces the status quo and thus militates against resistance or alternative visions. As a way of opening up the opportunity for a wider analysis of green consumerism (and consumerism per se), let us consider three issues that arise from the preceding discussions. First, I shall

112 The Myth of Green Marketing address the moral subtext that dominates green writing generally, but especially as it relates to green consumerism. Second, I shall question the equation that information = knowledge = power. Third, these two issues will lead into a discussion regarding 'the natural/ Open any book on an environmental topic, and it is difficult not to trip over normative assumptions, intimations, and prescriptions. Unless the text deals primarily with environmental ethics, however, it is unlikely that these ethics will be acknowledged or discussed. Even works that are meant to do so will on occasion reveal another level of often disconcerting moral innuendo, as does, for instance, with Robert Goodin's lapse (or leap) into anti-Buddhist scorn mentioned in the last chapter. Mary Mellor suggests that we are mesmerized by the seductions of 'shopping mall shrines/ and thanks to easy persuasion, we have built an unequal society on the quicksands of credit (1992, 203). Irvine and Ponton also write of 'persuasion/ 'seduction/ and 'exploitation7 (1988, 62). Sandy Irvine also is typical. He portrays the consumer as a wastrel and spendthrift, laden with sun machines, microwave ovens and Walkmans for two-year-olds: 'Consumerism equates more possessions with greater happiness. The more you own the happier you will be ... People first gorge themselves in spending sprees ... next followed by a clean-out to make room for a next set of novelties' (1989, 15). This is not the quiet image of a careful homemaker engaging in the everyday necessary activities of maintaining her family. Here is Goya's image of Saturn Devouring His Son. In this consumerist feeding frenzy, so goes the argument, advertising plays a particularly powerful and insidious role, maximizing selfconcern at the expense of social ecological responsibility: 'While causing individual insecurity, mass advertising also promotes external insecurity, in the ecology/ Thus, we are driven on in our spiral of consuming by a constant attempt to achieve greater personal status regardless of the costs to the environment. 'Advertising delivers well-tutored consumers to the shop counter/ Marketing, as a profession that developed in tandem with mass production, exploits our hopes and fears. It uses psychological techniques to discourage self-reliance and critical judgment. Indeed, some suggest advertising of products that threaten people or the environment should be banned by law; they include cars, airlines, energy supplies, drugs, and meat products (Irvine and Ponton 1988, 62, 59, 64). With advertising as the sophist, public opinion and consumer spending are monopolized by those with the most money (Irvine and Ponton

Green Consumerism 113 1988, 59). Consumerism makes individuals less able or willing to trust their own skills and judgement' (Irvine 1989, 15). The moral subtext comes through in the unwillingness of individuals to act on their knowledge of the consequences of their aggregated individual decisions that have adversely affected the ecological system she or he is a part of. The individual must be immoral in these circumstances because, as discussed in chapter 3, the only options are irrationality or immorality, and irrationality must be precluded if change in human behaviour is possible (here again is the refinability principle from the eighteenth century). This view is particularly reinforced in the extract from Seymour and Girardet quoted earlier in the chapter. Who is to determine the point at which one's fair share becomes excessive? Who decides on distribution of resources? Which products are to be manufactured? How does anyone know what is enough, or where the boundaries between generality and actuality fall? These are crucial questions, because this is where morality and immorality collide and where procuring becomes consuming. Within much of the literature, the point of fall is determined by the concept of absolute need. Need is a huge, esoteric topic, and I make no claims to being able to deal with it formally and adequately. The language of need and the assumption that we all agree on its definition are infused throughout the popular literature on green consumerism. Writers refer to need in qualitative terms (true and false), as well as in quantitative terms (enough). At times, the concept also seems to be used in an instrumental fashion. It is intimated that biological need is authentic desire and anything else is cultured whim, and, as the following quote illustrates, getting all this right is the only way to be 'happy': 'If we want to be happier and more contented we need to restrain our demands on the nonrenewable resources of the planet and stop acting in ways that we know perfectly well are tending to disaster' (Seymour and Girardet 1987, 9). For this sentence to make any sense, one must accept a number of assumptions. We are rational, autonomous individuals with the 'intelligence' and 'intuition' to turn 'information' into 'sense.' We all understand and know what authentic 'demands' are. We shall then combine 'free will' and 'responsibility' (to repeat the logics of their earlier quote). There seems to be some confusion here between analysis and prescription. This highlights a major problem with the manipulation thesis. On the one hand, these writers assert that individuals (except for themselves, it seems) exhibit a catalogue of unflattering traits. We are easily influenced, self-centred, insecure, incapable of making an inde-

114 The Myth of Green Marketing pendent judgment, egotistical, self-aggrandizing, and uninterested in the destructive consequences of our actions. In short, individuals are like goats - they are attracted to shiny objects and they will consume anything. Furthermore, individuals do not know the difference between an outright lie and an obvious truth, the credible and the absurd, the necessary and the frivolous, right and wrong, good and bad, happiness and discontent, true beauty and cosmetic artifice, enough and excess, quality and quantity, need and want. On the other hand, popular green discourse is full of information on the nature of the environmental crisis, global implications of the Northern history of affluence, and practical instructions on how to go about correcting the problems. The audience supposedly addressed would seem to be quite the opposite of the goatperson described above. This individual would more likely be the rational, autonomous, moral, capable citizen of Liberal tradition. Clearly, there are counterposing notions of human nature coexisting here. Any critique and explanation of green consumerism must deal with this apparent contradiction if it is to be credible and effective. Moralizing and lamenting the fickle character of the human race (mostly women) is not explanatory, prescriptive, or inspiring. Such labels simply reinforce many of the platitudes of productivist discourse itself. Another assumption connected to this is the equation that information = knowledge = power. It is common among the writings of environmental activists to find the problem of mass enlightenment and mobilization identified as primarily one of a lack of information. Indeed, most of the green handbooks and consumer guides clearly are written in this vein. How to Be Green begins, 'People have a lack of information' (Button 1989, 8). Its chapter titles read like a do-it-yourself manual: The Facts/ 'What Needs to Change/ 'What You Can Do/ 'Who Benefits/ 'Organisations and Supplies/ The extract from Seymour and Girardet analysed above evokes this information = knowledge = power equation when they exhort the individual to gather information, apply intellect/ intuition, and act responsibly. Arne Naess also puts great emphasis on the role of education and information: '[Through] increased awareness of the unreasonability of the present state of affairs/ we will gradually edge towards a gestalt shift (1989, 91, 89) in a Hegelian-like move towards Absolute Spirit. But through what process does this information become knowledge? When Seymour and Girardet write that the intelligent, intuitive person will 'make sense of this information/ it is not just any sense that is made.

Green Consumerism 115 The authors presume that information can be made sense of in only one way. Just as they use with unquestioning certainty concepts such as 'truly beautiful/ 'truly happy/ 'harmonious/ 'contented/ 'unnecessary/ and 'good/ they presume there are absolute readings of events and information (1987, 9, 102). Information, sense, and knowledge are frequently used interchangeably in popular environmental discourse. The conflation of sense and knowledge is not a particular issue here, but I would not want to collapse information into sense, because it is clear from discussions in the last two chapters that one person's sense is another person's 'squalid and deplorable' posturing (ibid., 9). I think that this easy move from information to knowledge is dangerous. First, it may preclude complex analysis and imaginative problem solving. Does it intimate that there is only one conclusion an individual can come to? Given the available information, is there only one way to view the problem, one understanding of it and its implications? But in such a situation the actual logical track of necessity is never articulated. Through what actual and particular dynamic would a possibility become a necessity? Where is the argumentation to convince? This kind of authoritarian writing is not uncommon and reaches a typical arrogance in Blueprint for a Green Planet, aptly named, given its simplistic and elitist tone. By implication there is only one right, true solution. Surely this exclusionistic thinking and theoretical stagnation eliminates the need for autonomy, rational thought, or independent thinking. Readers are exhorted to get informed and act, to use the human faculties they 'have been provided' with. According to the literature, this action is supposed to be the consequence of personal, independent decisions. It seems, however, that we all shall necessarily have the same analysis and conclusions - hence the same understanding of events - and shall propose the same solutions. How are we to understand this contradiction? If both absolute readings and autonomous thought coexist, then the purpose of our rational capacities are simply to arrive at inevitable conclusions; we reveal what is already there. Consider my second objection. If we extend Bookchin's question of whether or not the present order is capable of rectifying its own abuses, it may be useful to remember that we think and speak from within the Enlightenment mental universe. This is perhaps the central political point of my argument. We are within a hegemonic project at a point of stress. If we want to exist within its thought structures (e.g., still believe in reason and scientific enquiry) and yet change the conclusions, we

n6 The Myth of Green Marketing have to acknowledge that it is a place of contingency. We must analyse the circumstances through which possible consequences became natural consequences. In this way the necessity and inevitability may be taken out of those conclusions. If we refuse to do so, we must account for the fact that ecologists have been warning people for decades about the dystopian aspects of industrialization without having the same public and political impact these voices enjoy today. This is a historical and theoretical undertaking. These are the tools through which information can become knowledge that does lead to action. Those activists who do the valuable work of organizing and mobilizing resistance to the existing environmental world order must specify their cause-effect connections, not assume them. If one is to believe a better world is possible and that one is a knowledgeable, empowered actor in that transition, constructing a human nature in which the individual is either ignorant, immoral, or the duped puppet of conspiring marketers is counterproductive. The question, then, is not why cannot the stupid consumer see the obvious nonsense of green consumerism, but how is the individual making sense of it? Only by understanding how it comes to be 'common sense' will one be able to appreciate the unfortunate potential of this growing social myth to hegemonize a radical critique of productivist logics and activities. The two aspects of the environmental critique of green consumerism discussed above - the moral subtext and the information/knowledge/ power trilogy - take as an important part of their rationale a notion of the natural. What qualifies as natural, however, is often confused and contradictory yet at the same time essentialist. Natural needs are taken to be more biological than cultural, one infers. Robert Paehlke writes, 'Ecology is more fundamental than human wants and needs' (1989,143). An ecosystem is a scientific framework. If humans are of that system, how can their needs be counterposed to it? Are needs and wants conflated here? Sandy Irvine does make the distinction and adds that a 'truly green consumer' would think 'in terms of what is the minimum necessary to satisfy essential human needs rather than novelty, fashion, status and all the other hooks of materialism' (1989, 24). But what are these essential human needs? And what is the status of materialistic wants/needs? This question is central - it is at the very heart of the biocentric versus anthropocentric debate in environmentalist thought. Clearly, in this quote something is being counterposed ('rather than') to the unarticulated, apparently obvious, essential human needs. What

Green Consumerism 117 exactly is being qualified by the word 'essential' here? Is it needs, or human? 'Novelty, fashion, status' are simply dismissed. Why? Surely their historical and multicultural tenure indicates that they possibly do speak to some human need. The category of human nature sometimes extrapolates to include a natural human lifestyle. The idea is that we ought to be moving towards a post-materialist mode of living. This is a radical suggestion, not because we are too morally weak and drunk on consumerism to do so, but because it flies in the face of productivist logics and modern ontology. It would require a move from complex to simple. According to the folk myths of science and civilization, evolution dictates a movement in the completely opposite direction - from simple to complex. Furthermore, this direction of movement is supposed to be a moral good - at least that was the convenient excuse for the purposes of empire. When the writers of popular environmentalist and green consumerist literature say we do not have to follow a hair-shirt lifestyle, are they admitting that to be human is to be cultural, or are they simply using the tactic of adding a sweetener (the way one puts honey in a child's bitter medicine) to convince us to swallow the anti-consumption cure? Since the habit of consumerism and the language of advertising inhabit the plane of the symbolic, they are inherently cultural. If we wish to engage in a critique that will have some teeth in it, we must enter that realm. Environmentalists must consider the cultural aspects of humanity to be worthy of analysis. To understand why a cultural practice or belief maintains, it is useful to historicize its categories, activities, and assumptions to explain how these available discourses integrate in a sensible way. In chapter 2 I contextualized this process within the emergence of the modern notion of consumerism in the eighteenth century. I suggested an explanation of how it came to be that we can speak of consumerism as a positive economic activity. In chapter 5 I shall illustrate how, in our own time, green consumerism can make popular sense. Although in the ecological cosmic overview, that individual act is practically irrelevant, its mythical reading has enormous symbolic sense and meaning. In that capacity its function may be of far greater importance. But one last question before we move on to this topic. Advertising In The Green Capitalists we read, 'the same primary human motivations

118 The Myth of Green Marketing that drove the consumer boom of the four decades since the war remain' (Elkington and Burke 1987, 248). Although John Elkington may believe green consumerism to be an expression of instinct, most writers consider it driven by advertising. As discussed in chapter 2, the advertising business developed in relation to the expansion of commodity production for the mass market. Why do environmental activists and theorists not consider the field of advertising more closely, and can available research in that area explain green consumerism? A crude false consciousness / manipulation explanation has already been rejected here. It is inadequate to cope with the often subtle and nuanced constructions of marketers and advertisers. Writing in the Journal of Business Ethics, Joel Davis notes that the increasing cacophony of environmental claims by green marketers can have two effects. Either consumers will become cynical and not buy products making green claims, or they will believe that the problem has been solved (1992, 82). This consumer scepticism is noticed by others as well. It is suggested in an article in the Economist that when a company with no direct connection to the physical environment such as a bank jumps on the green consumerist bandwagon consumers become suspicious (1989, 16). The writer remarks on the confusion over claims by advertising terms, such as 'environmentally friendly/ In Advertising Age, one author reminds the corporation that companies 'must try to make a donation that appears altruistic and not solely dependent upon sales performance' (i993b, 16). In another Advertising Age article reference is made to a Gallup survey that indicates most people have little confidence in green advertising claims and more in seals of certification: 'Consumers are looking for marketers to do more than talk' (1991, 38). Note that this sensitivity towards what the consumer is thinking comes from the marketers. In contrast to the crude manipulation thesis proposed by some environmentalists, the advertisers and commodity producers cannot afford to be wrong in the short term. Given the list of 'dirty tricks' available, consumers are not far off with their suspicions. Advertisers are concerned more about their image than about their practice, as we have seen, and not everyone is fooled by the circus: 'For the record, some consumers are onto this ploy. In the first five weeks of 1990, the Advertising Standards Authority received more complaints about deceptively green ads than in all of 1989' (Cranston 1990, 38). Denis Hayes writes that marketers have four techniques to take advantage of the green consumer market. First, some simply lie. He calls

Green Consumerism 119 this 'eco-pornography/ Second, some tell a 'narrow truth/ designed to mislead. Third, some donate to some ecocause for every purchase made. Fourth, some are honest (Hayes 1991). Because advertisers and marketers are aware of this cynical edge among many consumers, much is written in the trade journals around these themes. The number of 'trivial, confusing, misleading and outright illegal claims' is increasing, writes Davis. He suggests that one way to attack the problem would be for business to develop a framework for the presentation of ethical environmental product claims. He describes two moral styles in the approach of industry towards green claims. One is to be cautious about statements and be unambiguously within the law and the limits of certainty. The other is to keep making claims until proved false (J. Davis 1992, 82, 83). Davis makes a useful distinction between a scientific truth, which he defines as a 'literal truth strictly according to the facts ... [i.e.] not legally false/ and a consumer truth, defined as 'the reasonable interpretation a typical or average person assigns to a claim' (1992, 81). This opens up the number of ways of thinking about environmental marketing. It is clear that the second ethical style is what allows a scientific truth to mislead or distort and still be within the law (the 'narrow truth' referred to by Hayes). This is the slippery terrain of green marketing, and it allows advertisers generally to avoid the pitfalls of eco-pornography. Again, I am reminded of Machiavelli. The prince is offered an array of strategies according to the nature of the community he wants to hegemonize or control. The character of the community dictates the choice of strategy. Of course, modern marketers cannot go to the same lengths as Machiavelli's prince to affect their influence. However, the analogy does have some limited application. It illustrates the point that communities are neither homogeneous nor all interpolated by the same voice. Environmental activists would do well to read their Machiavelli. Advertisers and marketers are not the crude and simple thinkers it would be convenient to believe they are. As illustrated here, they are carefully attuned to the need to find a balance among a number of authoritative and sympathetic discourses if the prize of effective credibility is to be achieved. Thus, they are the supple manipulators of available codes and discourses, weaving and evoking them in new but old ways. These are the plastic resources of the marketing business. This is also the dynamic described by those who write on myth. As discussed in chapter 2, the same elements repeatedly recombine in new configurations but with the same old message.

120 The Myth of Green Marketing Davis's remarks also suggest that advertising and marketing strategies are a legitimate area of analysis, beyond their economic associations. In support, a content analysis of advertising in the United States reports a significant rise in the proportion of advertisements concerned with ecology (Peterson 1991). Monolithic abstractions such as 'the chemical industry/ Troctor and Gamble/ or 'business' do not tell us anything, because individual managements operate with different moral styles. Also many of the strategies and techniques of green consumerism were adopted from the promoting and selling side of industry. For these reasons it may be useful to consider them as cultural conduits attempting to argue for one particular sense over other possible readings. Given the central role of marketing, then, can the field of advertising analysis provide a fuller understanding of green consumerism than much of the ecological literature seems to do? There are many approaches to the study of advertising, but not all aspects are useful here. In her significant study of 1978 Judith Williamson used a kind of theoretical amalgam of Althusserian Marxism and semiotics to peel back what was taken to be an artificial surface of advertising images to reveal the ideological subplot of capitalism below. But as one critic notes, the focus in Williamson's analysis is too much on text to the exclusion of context (Wells 1992, 178). This is a problem in much critical writing on advertising. There is a strong tradition, primarily arising from a base-superstructure Marxist model (heavily influenced by Althusser to focus on ideology), which views advertising as inauthentic and superficial. This is the theoretical locus of the manipulation / false consciousness thesis. It is still a common approach. Much of Stuart Ewen's work falls into this category: 'Style is about glittering surfaces'; it is 'Utopia/ counterposed to 'the dreariness of necessity' (1990, 42). Alan Tomlinson, writing in 1990, would concur with the anti-green-consumerism position of some environmentalists discussed earlier in that advertising is about manipulation and artifice. He constructs the consumer as automaton, controlled by 'political and economic masters/ He intimates that there was an earlier time of genuine culture, which has been replaced with a new artificial, inauthentic culture. Like the green writers concerned with false consciousness, he too invokes the polarities of 'apparent' versus 'authentic/ 'integrity' versus 'aura/ But strangely, after writing at length in this vein, he does an about-face and begins to attack the elitism, moralism, and nostalgia of others, then indicates that consumer culture is not all bad. It is hard to ascertain where Tomlinson himself

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stands. Although he seems to support strongly the manipulation thesis, he criticizes Baudrillard for his portrayal of the consumer as 'passive victim, recipient of signs and messages/ He also analyses a number of models of the consumer act and process, including those of Pavlov, Freud, Packard, Galbraith, and Veblen. Perhaps the most extreme model is that of Michael J. Baker, who claims in the following formula to have the comprehensive ability to account for all possible outcomes of buyer behaviour (Tomlinson 1990, 6, 9,14-22): P - f [SP, (PC, EC, (TA - TD), (EA - ED), BR)].

Although there is possibly something to gain from these theories, it is unlikely that any traditional theory or methodology regarding the study of advertising will get us any farther than a theory of false consciousness will. Most writing on advertising, however, views it also as a conduit of something, which the public face of business claims is straightforward product information. Much of the critical position sees advertising as conveying or reinforcing a variety of norms and stereotypes. What these positions have in common is that both see advertising as something outside and alien to the self. Many critical writers on advertising also seem to believe that the consumer of advertising is a passive receptacle, that interpretation is confined to either the intended message or the rejection of advertising as artificial and manipulative. In other words, it is viewed in terms of the success or failure of false consciousness. This bipolar thinking prevents us from exploring the wider possibilities of advertising. I suggest that we consider advertising more as a prism than as a social conduit promoting a unified message. We can retain the idea of it as a code, a language, but emphasize its plastic possibilities. It is a medium from which we can, and do, make our own montage. I do not reject it as a form of social communication or a transmitter of norms and stereotypes, but I want to open up our perceptions of advertising in order to emphasize its mythological and narrative possibilities. Andrew Wernick writes that the meaning of advertisements is interdependent across product lines and throughout the culture in a kind of exponentially expanding promotional intertextuality. He argues, however, that there is no beginning or end, only an indeterminate circle. This dynamic works by metonymy, whereby a part of a product serves to promote the larger product or series. Such resonance works within the culture generally: 'Advertising and popular culture share the same

122 The Myth of Green Marketing symbolic field. The compound of news, entertainment, and advertising circulated by ad-carrying media is promotional throughout and in depth. And every promotional point... is connected ... to a multitude of others/ He likens the dynamic to a hall of mirrors (Wernick 1991, 92-3, 101, 116, 121). While I agree with the idea of 'promotional culture/ I think there are also implied stories with beginnings and ends, folk myths that participate in an intertextuality of narratives. There are ongoing norms with no beginning or end (discourses), but it is clear that we grow up reading the world as stories as well. From their earliest years, cross-culturally, children learn norms in large part via stories, myths, ballads, literatures, and so forth. Martin Davidson writes that studying advertising means studying how we read languages, images, and myths; he refers to the 'consumer folk memory' (1992, 6-9). Professional marketing researchers Valentine and Evans say much the same: The world of objects "out there" is, in fact, structured by our internal codes and expectations. It is our perception that imposes order on the chaos of incoming sensory data' (1993,131). This is closer to the point I want to make. Consumers are not necessarily passive receptacles for ideas and desires outside themselves or for things and images they have been told to want. The consumer of advertising is also a producer not just of the meanings intended, but also of unintended meanings, their own lives, identities, and the world. Writing about media, James Carey suggests that 'reality is brought into existence, is produced by communication - by, in short, the construction, apprehension and utilization of symbolic forms' (1989, 25). Valentine and Evans write that 'consumers construct themselves' out of a 'cultural ether' of which product fields and brand names are a part, as they connect up with wider discourses (1993, 136). We are bombarded with the images and texts of advertising, which, as vocabulary, can be transformed into complete narratives, with morals, good guys, bad guys, and so on. Carey also writes that there are always challenges to the world we have produced. Therefore, reality must be continually regenerated and made authoritative (1989, 30). This is hegemony, although he does not term it such, and it indicates the importance of context in advertising. Context goes beyond the controlled 'lifestyle' references intentionally invoked in advertisements. In this sense there is no world of advertising, but only advertising in the world. That is, it trades on the same symbols and codes as other cultural meaning systems do. Advertising is esoteric, but its power relies on its ability to work within existing discourses in a plastic way. A different sense can be made from unlikely

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juxtapositions exactly because elements in advertisements reverberate among a whole range of cultural icons from fine art to rock videos. Mythic story-lines are everywhere. My purpose in this chapter has been to describe the character and emergence of green consumerism. Because of the polarized arguments around the phenomenon, this has involved a discussion of various dominant positions in the debate. I have also indicated that the existing explanations and critiques, while valuable, are of limited scope because they are insufficiently contextualized, presuming green consumerism to be situated in only one discourse, be it economic or ideological. In the next chapter I shall suggest a reading of green consumerism as social myth. Using this as an organizing concept, I shall argue that green consumerism is effective because it functions as a hegemonic suture. Context in this sense lies in the spaces between discourses. By facilitating a new synthesis of existing discourses, green consumerism rationalizes what, in fact, is a radical critique of productivist logics.

5

Analysis of Examples

Green consumerism is an act embedded in a facilitating matrix; it is not simply an isolated act of purchase. That activity is meaningful only within a system of beliefs that encode it with one significance but not another. The advertisements and public statements of producers and others related to the business of selling products are examined here to explore how green consumerism communicates by cloaking itself in the aura of existing authoritative discourses. Any number of examples of green consumerism could have been chosen, including those from environmental groups or consumer organizations. The point being made would not have been different. It is not necessary to explore the signification of every available example; a few carefully analysed illustrations make the same point as a thousand specimens. In addition, public statements made by companies and marketers are useful, because they protect the leadership status of existing economic elites as well as a general public commitment to expansionistic logics. It is also difficult, as previously mentioned, to delineate clearly the edges of green consumerism. For example, even if Shell Chemicals is congratulating itself for its contribution to village life in Africa, the publicity is promoted in the North, in countries where Shell sells a wide range of everyday household products, such as automobile gasoline, furnace oil, and a range of plastic products. These products have been consistently associated with environmental degradation. Gasoline and home fuel emissions are associated with global warming, and the long life and non-biodegradable nature of plastics also have been much criticized, particularly for problems of waste management. Around 1990, as in 1995, Shell was criticized for its environmental irresponsibility in Africa. Likewise an oil tanker spill and the subsequent short- or long-term destruction of local

Analysis of Examples 125 ecosystems make the whole industry look bad, and it may result in a boycott of one particular brand. A company must respond if it wants to maintain its share of the market. Thus, it is useful to promote not just individual products as environmentally safe, but also the corporation as generally environmentally responsible, even if mistakes do occur. Individual ecologically destructive acts can then be isolated and set aside as aberrations to the (good) norm rather than the inevitable consequence of inadequate corporate environmental policy. The same can be said of IBM, McDonald's, and Wal-Mart. They sell products. If large numbers of consumers demand social and environmental responsibility from producers and retailers, then it is clearly in the interests of vendors to foster a public image that projects them as leaders in these areas. This corporate promotion is an important part of the green consumerist myth, and it interweaves with related elements, such as reports by environmental groups, consumer reporting agencies, and local community activities (corporate sponsorship of 'clean-up7 days, for example). Many producers of mass commodities and services are multinational conglomerates, which may add to their vulnerability, given the criticism many corporations are facing for exporting their environmental problems. But it may also be an advantage. In the capitalist business hierarchy, being big and being international can enhance prestige and credibility. They may thus be afforded a wider audience and louder voice than local environmental or consumer advocate groups, for example, have. When Stephen Ausband, in his book describing the stabilizing role of myth, suggests that humankind's most pressing need may be not for food but for order, he is merely stating directly what intellectuals have been intimating for millennia. Even if such a speculation is overstating the case, there is no denying that the systematizers of social theory have by far outnumbered the theorists of chaos (Ausband 1983, 2). Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, however, it has also been argued that myth is the locus of instability.1 Be this as it may, the maintenance of fixity is a particular concern here. In this chapter I shall give some material flesh to the abstract bones of argument. When a rupture occurs in the apparent stability of hegemony, a suture is required in order to repair the damage before it gets too wide. This is the role of social myths. The dynamic of the mythic narrative, it will be remembered, moves towards resolution, completing the suture. In the green consumer myth, this dynamic centres on the

126 The Myth of Green Marketing decision to purchase products that are perceived to be environmentally benign (meaning they are made of renewable resources, can be recycled, and are non-toxic to the air, land, and water). At the mythic level these products are absolutely pure and there are no ambiguities or controversies around their identification. This construction of purity is happening on the symbolic plane. It is unlikely that many people believe their particular purchase will have an immediate, noticeable effect on global warming, estuary contamination, or zone depletion. No otters will be brought back to life by a few consumers switching to lead-free gasoline. Consumers do, however, perceive a relationship between everyday toxins and environmental deterioration. They are not the mindless puppets of marketing executives when they do so: there is a connection. As mentioned in the introduction, we must indeed encourage the substitution of less damaging products for those that must be produced, but to deal concretely with the legitimate reservations of Bookchin, Mellor, and others, this happy resolution itself must be disrupted. As briefly mentioned in chapter 3, one of the most central notions in environmental discourse is the concept of harmony. Whether one reads the popular, academic, or marketing press, the associations of balance and accord inform even when not stated directly. Often writers on environmental topics begin with descriptions of transcendent personal experiences. Arne Naess even names his philosophy 'Ecosophy T' after the mountain that for him had a profound influence in his own ecological understanding. Ecosophy T is the point of intuition where each individual has personal enlightenment regarding her connectedness to the earth's ecosystem. Both this philosophy and his 'deep ecology' concept seem to presume that balance and harmony are the starting points of nature and that this situation can be replicated at the social level. He refers to 'dissatisfaction and restlessness due to the artificial tempo and the artificial "modern" life/ and argues that we should work towards a 'gestalt shift' in which we would then see ourselves as part of a whole (Naess 1989, 4, 27, 25, 57). These sentiments are echoed by Paehlke, when he suggests we must move from the language of 'arrogance' and 'conquest' to that of 'humility' and 'harmony/ stating that the central value of environmentalism is respect for the laws of nature (1989,143). It follows that 'humility and harmony' are the laws of nature. Goodin, although he explains at a most abstract level that it is necessary to have separation of parts in order to have harmony between them, assumes harmony to need no explanation, only description and referencing. In the more popular environmental manuals, the notion of a harmoni-

Analysis of Examples 127 ous Nature is even more present than in the academic texts. Seymour and Girardet write, 'Such is our human make-up that we can only be truly happy if we are living in harmony with the rest of the world around us/ Our Western lives, which revolve around 'consumption and waste/ are said to be 'non-harmonious and destructive/ This 'world out of balance' is to be put right by handy hints, such as the 'six principles of good housekeeping' (Seymour and Girardet 1987, 9). Notice how nonharmonious is equated with destructive, and that this parallel is at the same time 'out of balance/ Does balance mean equality? Can a lack of equality still be a balance of sorts and therefore be harmonious? Capitalism comes to mind as an example. So does the practice of affirmative action. Again, harmony is never historicized as a concept, but is assumed as self-evident. It acquires its unquestionable authority through its association with nature, the locus of ecological truth, and disinterested arbitration. Harmony is also present by its absence. From nature we are 'divorced/ according to Irvine and Ponton (1988, 9), 'separated/ writes Tokar (1987, 14), and 'alienated' agrees Porritt (1984, 93). But these are transitive verbs. What are we divorced, separated, and alienated from? This language suggests incompleteness and wrongful detachment. Nature, the object of these deficiencies, is by extrapolation a wholeness, a completeness. In much of the environmental literature this assumption, quite literally, goes without saying. IBM

Nature as harmony is clearly an association not lost on art directors and copywriters. Images of thriving trees, butterflies, ponds, rain forests, and so forth abound. As it is popular discourse that most frequently gives particularity and form to the story line of green consumerism, consider this example from IBM. It is quite typical of an advertisement promoting commitment to environmental issues. The advertisement is a two-page spread containing a large colour photograph that takes up approximately two-thirds of the total area and reaches from margin to margin across both pages. A headline and block of text appear below the image. The photograph is of a lake surrounded by lush forest that comes right to the water's edge. The lake is calm except for the slightest of winds, just enough to scatter part of the surface into a thousand glittering beads. The sun is shining. What might be the intended reading of

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When it comes to the environment, their growth and development. progress can mean maintaining the In fact, at IBM we're developing a status quo. variety of new technologies to help keep That's why at IBM we're applying the environment the way it was meant advanced technology in ways that help to be. preserve the world, rather than change it. Because we believe that sometimes the best thing that can happen to the The Global Resource Information Database (GRID) is just one example. world is absolutely nothing at all. With the help of IBM, this farnreaching United Nations effort is gathering and analyzing crucial environmental information thats helping countries worldwide anticipate the environmental impact of

130 The Myth of Green Marketing this image? The sparkling surface gives a clean, refreshing aura to the image, much like that achieved by ice cubes and condensation on glass in a soft-drink advertisement. The water is clear because it reflects the light. One has the impression that were it not for the reflection, one would see right through its transparent purity, to the bottom. The lake bed, by association, would be tidy and organic, not littered with beer bottles, old tires, and discarded bedsprings. A mass of tree trunks stand tall and strong, jammed in healthy profusion along the bank. The sun, unimpeded by pollution, infuses the scene with a richness and warmth that is more spiritual than chemical. Here is literally the perfect picture of environmental harmony. But why is this image used? Why does IBM, a computer company, dominate this very expensive colour advertisement with a picture of wilderness? Would not a bustling urban scene be more appropriate? Consider the text of the advertisement. The headline is printed in a traditional Roman typeface, five millimetres high, large enough to be the leader but not so large that it dominates the image. It reads, In A Changing World Some Things Deserve To Remain Just The Way They Are/ The text continues, When it comes to the environment, progress can mean maintaining the status quo. That's why at IBM we're applying advanced technology in ways that help preserve the world, rather than change it. The Global Resource Information Database (GRID) is just one example. With the help of IBM, this far-reaching United Nations effort is gathering and analyzing crucial environmental information that's helping countries worldwide anticipate the environmental impact of their growth and development. In fact, at IBM we're developing a variety of new technologies to help keep the environment the way it was meant to be. Because we believe that sometimes the best thing that can happen to the world is absolutely nothing at all.

The text (set in a readable but not obtrusive fourteen point) also has a sparkling clarity. Sentences are of uncomplicated construction and four out of the five paragraphs are only one sentence long. Indeed, the final paragraph is only a partial sentence. Although some of the vocabulary is technically esoteric, none of it is unfamiliar to the average reader. For example, the product ostensibly the subject of the advertisement, something called the Global Resource Information Database, is no doubt an

Analysis of Examples 131 extremely hi-tech, sophisticated computer system that would boggle the minds of most readers. But each of those words is familiar to a modern reader, including 'Database' (although even twenty years ago it may not have been). Consequently, alienation from the theme is avoided. Harmony has a number of manifestations in this advertisement. At the most formal level there is a visual harmony of layout and photographic composition. This may seem an insignificant detail from the point of view of political studies, but form does have function, and this function can have political implications, as Jimi Hendrix's iconoclastic version of the American national anthem illustrates. Even when not identifiably political, such as Samuel Beckett's interminable sentences in The Unnamable and e.e. cummings's rejection of the upper case, that which disrupts the norm draws attention to itself and provokes questions. But symmetry, unity, and evenness are also forms: uniformity and repetition may signify constancy and an absence of questioning. Harmony is not innocent. The Golden Age image of lush, pure, untrammelled Nature finds expression in every generation. This is what Slotkin terms a 'resonant Icon/ It is iconic in that while the physical world by definition is changeable, 'Nature' as an iconic manifestation is static. Yet it is resonant because of the way it projects and transfers its blessing of Tightness and innocence upon whatever it is related to. If someone were shown only this double-page photograph and asked what the image is advertising, it is unlikely they would say 'databases/ The formal pictorial qualities of the image evoke the much-revered order and harmony of the natural world. This resonates with the text, which itself is internally congruous. Such harmony, which works together in an invisible cadence, takes its credibility and legitimacy from a conceptualization of the physical environment that emphasizes interdependence and organic balance rather than (in actually existing nature) the equally present violence and annihilation. Bible stories aside, there are no snakes in Paradise. This vision has a long tradition; it has dominated the cultural history of Western society. The works of Rousseau and Thoreau, Carlyle and Emerson come to mind, as well as landscape painting styles such as the approach of the Barbizon School in France or the pastoral scenes of the Stour River by John Constable. There are exceptions to the harmonious landscape tradition,2 but although nature is sometimes threatening, the predominant conceptualization is one of harmony. As the previous discussion illustates, the physical world provides no

132 The Myth of Green Marketing necessary interpretation. If it did, this advertisement could not wallow so comfortingly in the language of stasis. This is not the 'text which speaks itself; it is the 'narrative substance' that speaks itself - that is, nature as the cultural object we have conceived and reinforced over time (White 1980, 2-3; Ankersmit 1988, 219; see also chap, i, m). The text of this advertisement does not reveal transparency of Being; it contributes to a traditional cultural leitmotif so familiar that its passing leaves no more trace than steam.3 It is the unspoken, as theorized by Barthes, McCloskey, and Todorov, that is active in this advertisement. The 'absence' is the environmental crisis. The advertisement speaks about preserving the environment, but within its context there is no prima facie reason to think that any aspect of the ecosystem is under unusual stress. The reader must go outside this advertisement to make sense of it. Where to go is indicated by symbolic details that give clues as to which signifying system(s) - myths, genres, discourses - to access. This is how 'the narrative acts like a stimulant in the reader's mind/ in the words of McCloskey. As Todorov notes, however, while the text contains 'directions for its own reading/ the myth has a closed rationalism of its own logic. Just as the vision of nature conjured here is not arbitrary but is the enchanted one of environmentalist discourse, causes and solutions come from within the horizon of product!vist logics. This is the function of what Barthes terms the 'cultural codes/ that is, legitimizing elements laid down in the text and reactivated by the reader. In the IBM advertisement the codes are science, technology, and the United Nations. With the use of the first person, IBM attaches itself to the scientific cultural code: 'we're applying advanced technology'; 'we're developing a variety of new technologies.' The associations of science and technology - 'progress/ 'preserve/ 'helping/ 'anticipate ... impacts/ 'growth and development/ - all are valued as good. Just as ecological destruction is absent, the role of science and technology, in the hands of commerce and industry, is absent. Although both referent and agent are not present, the 'reader' (in the role of author, or 'writer' in Barthes's sense) has no trouble producing meaning, or an intelligible whole, as Todorov would phrase it. The epistemological ground of science provides the requirements of objectivity, credibility, and legitimacy that a story must contain if it is to have self-evident truth. When McCloskey writes that the storyteller cloaks himself in Truth, we need not conceive the narrator necessarily as an individual. In this advertisement, the narrator is IBM, but it is also

Analysis of Examples 133 productivist discourse. Consequently, the issue is confined within productivist language and thought processes. There is no hint that these discourses of helping and saving had (or have) any role in creating or maintaining that absent presence - significant ecological damage. Here is the myth of green consumerism in action. A critical reading of this advertisement is possible. The absence, instead of being conceived as fuzzy environmental 'concern' may be understood as industrially polluted rivers, dead lakes, resource exhaustion, air unfit to breath, soil and ground water contamination from chemical farming, birth defects, increases in cancers, global warming, to mention only a few critical, substantive situations. IBM, commerce, industry, science, and technology have had a hand in this deterioration. Furthermore, concepts such as progress, anticipation of impact, growth and development, application of new and advanced technology, preservation of things the way they are are not necessarily to be valued good. A number of factions within the environmental movement would agree that these concepts have been disastrous in many cases and are indeed open to criticism and substantial rethinking. The confusion and ambiguity of meaning in the IBM advertisement illustrates productivism's present vulnerability and inability totally to secure the truth of its discourse. In other words, the advertisement reveals the contingent character of productivism. The myth of green consumerism is a coordinating agent, which weaves together selected elements from available discourses. It pulls together a story that privileges only the Utopian possibilities of science, technology, growth, development, and so on. A credible picture of how, in the face of severe criticism, these discourses can still hang together and reach a prosperous conclusion is presented in language and concepts that are comfortingly familiar. It must be emphasized that although the role of leadership is extremely important, it is not IBM or business and industry that direct this conclusion. Readers themselves produce this meaning. It is, after all, just plain common sense. For them to produce a reading critical of the productivist assumptions in this advertisement is entirely possible. Many environmentally concerned readers do. But it is unlikely that the average person who has a lifetime of accepting the authority of science, technology, and industry and lives a life whose everyday prosperity is ostensible proof of productivism's veracity will do so. As it happens, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in California has documented IBM's foot dragging on cleanup of soil and ground water contamination/ which the coalition alleges potentially exposed 100,000

134 The Myth of Green Marketing residents to chemical-linked cancers and birth defects. Also, 'heavy pressure' was necessary to extract a promise from IBM to phase out its CFC use. Three of IBM's plants were the top CFC-H3 emitters in the United States in 1987, over a dozen years after CFCs harmful effect on the ozone was established (Beers and Capellaro 1991, 41). The assumption that harmony is worth preserving forms a relentless aspect of the message. It is repeated in four different ways in the space of six sentences: 'maintaining the status quo/ 'preserve the world, rather than change it/ 'keep the environment the way it was meant to be/ 'the best thing that can happen to the world is absolutely nothing at all/ These are strong statements. What we see here is not the slow transmutation of traditional political conservative principles. It is absolute, total stasis and a complete absurdity. In spite of the controversy around, and abuse of, the theories of Charles Darwin and like-minded scientists, one is left with credible evidence to suggest that organisms in the natural world adapt to environmental conditions over time or they die out. The transmutability of species has been established in scientific discourse. In other words, even within its own techno-scientific, rational paradigm, this advertisement is confused, inaccurate, and contradictory. The most unreflective reader would admit that something had likely changed over billions of years on this planet. But this advertisement is not about the physical environment. It is about the symbolic environment. As a conceptual entity, 'environment' stands in for but does not reproduce the material world. The present discussion, however, is not designed to peel away artificial meaning and reveal a true ideological message lurking within. The argument here is that multiple meanings are possible, and 'the environment/ as a highly significant symbol in the present historical matrix, is open to appropriation by interests. What causes the recipient of messages to privilege one reading over another? What happens when the comfortable context within which an ordinary and everyday understanding of information breaks down? When subjects of a discourse begin to balk at their easy subordination, other readings become available. These competing messages likely were there all along but were successfully hegemonized into the wallpaper. The radical ecological critique harbours such potential. It has dogged the history of industrial development but perhaps never has it enjoyed such widespread acknowledgement as it does in the 19905. What faces the average observer, of course, is not an obvious fundamental attack on expansionism qua expansionism but a blur of greenness offering multi-

Analysis of Examples 135 pie possible stories of explanation. Furthermore, as it shares many of the same discourses as its adversaries, the green critique is vulnerable to recooptation or re-marginalization. Indeed, the myth of green consumerism attempts to hegemonize the environmental critique on this basis, which further illustrates the point (made in chapter 4) that the equation, information = knowledge = power, is not a necessary relationship. Before considering some further implications regarding the celebration of hegemony implicit in this advertisement, let us briefly consider a related point. IBM states that it is working to help to keep the environment the way 'it was meant to be/ This assertion is pure metaphysics. Through what movements of logic does that which is necessarily transmutational become represented as rightfully static? Meant by whom? Assuming environment is the antecedent of 'it/ and assuming stasis is the intended and purposeful condition postulated, who predicated this state? The answer cannot simply be 'the natural order' or 'the laws of the physical universe/ This would only present two more problems. First, if a repetitive pattern is a self-justifying law, then there is no possibility of autonomy or of generating parallel or countervailing systems, such as ethical standards. Second, semantically, 'to mean' presupposes an intending subject. Even if we locate the intender (without resorting to God), we must then ask through what moral imperative does a specific will extrapolate to the universality implied in the phrase, 'it was meant to be'? A moral code is by definition a sociocultural expression, not an ecoscientific one. What of choice? To in tend/mean one thing assumes the existence of other possible intentions/meanings. Who is an authoritative chooser? What is the locus of his legitimation? There are no answers to these questions; and it is crucial for IBM that there not be. If the earth were a place where intransigent pristine Nature ruled by absolute fiat, it is unlikely there would be an IBM. We shall return to the issue of the powerful but absent agent later. Let us now further develop the character of harmony. It is important to do so because in the mythic/symbolic realm where popular imagination meets ecological crisis, the implicit status quo is balance and harmony. Although the IBM advertisement never actually states this in so many words, these qualities are clearly spoken by the photograph. One could argue, in fact, that visual images, with their formal qualities of line, shape, colour, and composition are particularly suited to creating atmospheres, and because they speak to the senses, rather than to the intellect, they are not confined to the limits of rational argumentation. They convince through intuition, and, to many, intuition is a legitimate way of

136 The Myth of Green Marketing knowing. Consider again the text. Part of its flow comes from a comfortable pairing of accepted relationships: 'gathering and analysing/ 'growth and development/ Is this usage not at odds with the muchrevered stasis (The best thing that can happen to the world is absolutely nothing at all')? Perhaps there is no contradiction or ambiguity because the 'status quo' worth 'preserving' is 'growth and development/ This fact is reinforced by reference to closely connected ideas, such as 'progress/ using 'advanced technology' to do 'environmental impact' studies, and 'developing new technologies/ The authoritative voice of global capital is achieved in different ways: partly through situating IBM as a major player in the advanced information technology business and partly by mentioning its international stature. IBM's technology is capable of having an impact on the whole world, it seems. This implication is given extra force by the 'United Nations' reference. Finally, the phrase 'growth and development' in the international context described here suggests that it refers to 'developing nations/ As well, the United Nations is not often concerned with technology transfers between highly industrialized countries; it is primarily interested in those involving 'developing' ones. The connection between advanced technology and economic affluence that permeates international discourses resonates here. This First-World/Third-World reference enhance IBM's authority. We understand from this advertisement that IBM is committed to the preservation of the physical environment as wild and unpolluted. A broader reading, I argue, suggests that the harmony IBM is committed to preserving is also the unquestioned acceptance of expansionistic economic systems: industrial growth and a notion of development that is defined within the historical memory of productivist discourse. There is also a political dimension to this environment IBM wishes to preserve. We are informed that major political power holders in the world look to IBM for help. Even that pseudo world parliament, the United Nations, which takes international political stability as its raison d'etre, apparently depends on IBM. The 'growth and development' for which IBM provides 'crucial' input is political as well as economic, as countries are pushed to enact policies that will facilitate one type of economic development over another. The model favoured by planners is always that of free enterprise industrial expansionism. The harmony in that paradigm is between politics and economics. For all the posturing in the IBM advertisement, any serious ecological critique would not find harmony between growth and the endangered world ecosystem.

Analysis of Examples 137 As we can see from this discussion, in spite of the photograph that encourages a reading of 'environment' as Nature, other possible understandings of the term are not precluded in context. Indeed, the associations are of an influential multinational corporate giant to whom political, economic, and social harmony and stability are central. This reading reinforces the criticisms of some radical ecologists that the environment is a broad issue that connects all aspects of the way we live. But the selective nature of advertising disconnects and compartmentalizes discourses and topics, thus perpetuating the fragmentation of the environmental movement. When we look at possible ambiguities in the reading of the advertisement we see that subversive readings are latent. Furthermore, there are several absences in this advertisement. Which status quo is referred to? What is the nature of the 'change' being rejected? How are 'growth' and 'development' defined? What is the position regarding different types of 'impact'? What is considered 'environment'? How does IBM know it was 'meant' to be that way? What is meant by 'world' and 'absolutely nothing'? What is the opinion of IBM? What is its ethical position vis-avis these issues? The point is that multiple meanings are possible, as are multiple contexts. Meaning may be determined by language game, but which one? The same symbolic object may figure in a number of discourses or myths. Thus, when reading this advertisement, we are offered different possible understandings, but most options go unrecognized and only one makes common sense. The radical reading latent in the IBM advertisement is invisible, because the ad identifies the problem as a technical one. What is required to alleviate disharmony in the natural world is the appropriate electronic equipment to gather information and analyse the data. In other words, all we need to avert Apocalypse is the right software. The language in the advertisement indicates that something is at risk. But we are saved by science and technology, as we always have been. Our faith in productivism is reinforced without our even realizing that it was ever in question. Harmony resumes its naturalness and the hegemonic suture is complete. The advertisement makes no deep ecological sense, but it does make sense. Which sense depends on which discourse the reader is functioning within. Modern life is a minefield of conflicting paradigms, which is why leadership is so important. Gramsci acknowledged this discursive quagmire when he expanded the category of intellectual, and certainly his comments on the entrepreneur quoted earlier are very relevant here.

138 The Myth of Green Marketing Many business people would agree. 'As corporate citizens, we must lead the way toward better, more environmentally sound alternatives/ a writer in Management Review proclaims (Peak 1990, i). It must be remembered, however, that leadership is a function within a discourse. Consequently, the leader is not always an individual; it can also be a corporation, an industry, or a group of like-minded thinkers. Four qualities are particularly important for the hegemonic success of a leader. First, she must instil trust in others. Second, the leader must be a holder and source of knowledge; she must know true knowledge from false knowledge. Third, these advantages are used to account for incongruities and make believable explanations. Fourth, the leader is able to be of an esteemed elite and at the same time maintain a distance that gives the individual subject the feeling of being connected to it (a worthy subject) without being patronizing, losing its superior distance, or slipping into aloofness. The leader should appear fair, so that even though she is connected to a position, she is still capable of being impartial and disinterested when it comes to absolute ethics, because at the meta-level of humanity, the common good is considered to be everybody's common good, even one's adversaries. The successful leader always trades on this fact in order to bridge the gap between her status as superior, and the danger of alienating the subject, owing to perceived aloofness or disconnectedness. Leaders who fail to maintain this tension will find it difficult to hegemonize successfully - in other words, convince others that the leader's own interest is, in fact, the public interest. IBM, for example, is working to 'help preserve the world/ It is 'helping countries worldwide/ In this selfless mission IBM is 'applying' equally disinterested methods and tools, such as 'gathering and analyzing,' and 'advanced technology/ In an article in Progressive Grocer (U.S.A.) the single most important factor in making environmental claims is identified as credibility, and the key to credibility is trust. Somewhat optimistically (if there is indeed a high level of consumer cynicism), the author states that the average consumer trusts business to keep him informed. But the retailer 'must not appear to have a self interest/ he cautions. This warning is reinforced by a Gallup survey, which indicates that most people have little confidence in 'green' advertising claims and much more confidence in green seals and label claims (Advertising Age 1991, 10). Distance is achieved through legitimation from an outside source. The article refers to Green Cross, a product certification program administered by Scien-

Analysis of Examples 139 tific Certification Systems Inc. Surely, this company must be the ultimate in legitimizers. Each word in its name connotes all the absolute, disinterested infalli-bility of a sterilized test tube. 'Scientific' connotes accuracy, exactitude, and truth. 'Certification' has the ring of certainty and authoritative judgment. 'Systems' bespeaks predictability, organization, and the comforting security of routine and trusted method. Finally, all this is 'Incorporated/ suggesting that business can be a true source of impartial judgment. Professional marketers make the most of this connection between ethics, leadership, and the environment. Hear the ghost of Gramsci himself: There is always a moral issue as well. Business should take a leadership role in education about the environment and not leave it exclusively to government/ This is not the language of business opportunity, but of the common good. The sentence immediately preceding this quote, however, reads, The smart marketer can see a good thing coming' (Oldland 1989, 36). These two statements can be juxtaposed without incongruity because in the liberal-democratic/capitalist matrix in which it is situated, commerce and industry are instilled with a strong leadership role. Indeed, it is their public duty to take advantage of every opportunity to keep the economy moving. Hence, it is in the public interest that private profits are maintained or increased in order to promote investor confidence and the expansion of industry, trade, and commerce. Such is the role of the entrepreneur, as Gramsci noted. This sacrificial tone is clearly illustrated in an interview regarding the green policy of Wal-Mart, a company that fosters a reputation in the United States for environmental marketing. The objective of any environmental initiative is to make progress. The object is to do what's right, not necessarily get the recognition. The only way any manufacturer ... can exist is ... on the basis of perpetuating the truth ... We rely on [manufacturers] to do the right thing and be honest ... We feel ... the environment should not be a self-serving issue to Wal-Mart and should be a kind of consumer advocacy situation where we simply represent the wants and needs of our customers and find ways to empower them. (Fisher 1991, 20)

The interview continues in this vein, the interviewee describing how Wal-Mart has 'inspired' other vendors to 'emulate' its behaviour: 'We feel very strongly that we could exert some kind of leadership role.' The interview brings together many of the themes discussed here. It is laced with references to 'what's right' and 'the truth.' The claim to lead-

140 The Myth of Green Marketing

ership is supported partly through the company's contribution and partly through its inspirational leadership role, both in relation to its customers and in relation to other retailers. Like IBM, Wal-Mart finds itself in a 'kind of consumer advocacy situation/ It wants to demonstrate leadership through assuming a morally pure position, being a holder of legitimate and true knowledge, and empowering others by means of educating them. The educational role is important because customers likely want to feel that their decision is an informed choice based on their own rational assessment. No one likes to see himself as manipulated by advertising. At the same time marketers need to control what is perceived as good, legitimate information as opposed to radical, hippie nonsense. For example, in the IBM advertisement, 'anticipating' impact is the point of IBM's role; there is no mention of minimizing or eliminating impact. The refusal to name functions is a symbolic erasure. Thus, when advertisers state that 'environmental communications should play a key role in educating consumers on all aspects of materials, packaging, recycleability/ they refer to their power to select what is important, to scope definitions, and to set standards (Lawrence and Colford 1991, 29). This is rather like asking a cat to design a bird cage. Such is the story of advertising. Its informational, educational identity persists, as though its mandate were disinterested public service. Wal-Mart may not have the aura of science and technology that surrounds IBM, but it can still make claims to being a holder of truth, knowledge, and Tightness. Anyway, as illustrated by the Progressive Grocer article, these important legitimizing discourses can literally be brought in through the back door through 'scientific certification.' It is important to do so, or questions may crop up asking about whose knowledge, whose truth - that is, knowledge and truth in whose interest? Also notice the self-sacrificing aspect of leadership in the phrase, 'not necessarily get the recognition.' This is an important aspect of the role, and we shall see more of it. If leadership is perceived to be simply the tool of personal aggrandizement, then trust, credibility, and the power to motivate generally evaporates. Leadership, after all, is an implicit contract between the leader and the led, as Gramsci suggested, and the basis of that relationship is trust. Many businesses at their public relations best seem to ooze sincerity regarding their civic responsibility towards the environment. Organizations that take industrial expansionism as their purpose and goal, however, may be found suspect by many ecologists. There is much evidence

Analysis of Examples 141 to support this criticism, as was discussed in earlier chapters, such as in the critique of consumerism by deep ecology. As the Gulf War illustrated, however, much damage can also be inflicted by friendly fire. In an article in Marketing celebrating corporate involvement with 'clean-Up Australia Day' in 1990 the reluctance of businesses to be supportive was reported. The organizing committee approached more than twenty companies before a sponsor was found. Given the financial constraints of many businesses, this result may not be surprising, but once the highprofile Westpac Bank agreed, others lined up to be included (RothnieJones 1990, 25). In Advertising Age it was noted that a group of advertisers in California tried to have a law overturned that required them to be more precise in their environmental labelling (regarding terms like ozone friendly, biodegradable, recyclable, etc.) and not to make specious claims for their products (19933, 38). The journal of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland reported the results of a survey it had conducted in 1993. Of the firms polled, none had a formal policy regarding environmental issues. In listing the 'extent to which factors influenced [their] consideration/ the answers overwhelmingly suggested that business is not leading the way, only conforming to government regulations and trying to avoid prosecution (Fitzgerald 1993, 30). Their concerns are real. In a Harvard Business School study the authors report that two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies have been charged with serious crimes from price fixing to dumping hazardous wastes (Dadd and Carothers 1990,12). Even so, the corporate promotion aspect of green consumerism, remember, is crucial because it builds trust and confidence, which makes the consumer willing to listen to, and believe in, the green claims of industry and commerce. Shell The international petrochemical giant Shell Chemicals provides another example. The worldwide boycott of Shell products due to its participation in the economy of apartheid South Africa is well known. But Shell's public image problems did not end with the liberation of South Africa. In 1995 there were many high-profile criticisms of Shell in Nigeria. In January 1993, 100,000 Ogoni people protested against Shell's business and environmental activities in Nigeria. In April of that year one protester was shot and others were wounded by Nigerian security forces. Shell was accused of stealing oil from the Ogoni people, polluting water, turning some areas into wastelands, running oil pipelines overland, flar-

142 The Myth of Green Marketing ing gas twenty-four hours a day close to human habitation, and developing oil wells within village boundaries. Over a ten-year period Shell had allegedly spilt 1.5 million gallons of oil in Nigeria. Although fined in 1990 for flaring gas, Shell continued the practice, causing health problems, it was reported. In June 1993 the company took more than fifty days to stop a crude-oil spill from a pipeline rupture. There is apparent collusion on occasion between Shell and the government, since protesters are at times injured and jailed (Ecologist March/April 1993; September/October 1993,181). Perhaps the most high-profile public relations disaster for Shell occurred when it refused to use its influence in Nigeria to prevent the hanging of author and poet Ken Saro-Wiwa, who had been a major critic of Shell's environmental ransacking of Nigeria. For years Saro-Wiwa had been campaigning against Shell, referring to the company as 'waging an ecological war against the Ogoni/ Shell has been criticized internationally for its actions and destruction in Nigeria and has been implicated in the death of Saro-Wiwa and other activists (Rowell 1995, 210). In 1990 there appeared an advertisement promoting the socially responsible role of Shell Chemicals in Africa.4 It featured a stunning colour photograph, which fills two pages, of an African village, complete with all the traditional Western signifiers of the 'primitive/ A crowd of barefoot native people are gathered around a large open fire. One of the women in African dress is stirring a huge cauldron. Some people stand; others sit on the ground. A goat is tethered nearby. Huts of mud and grass flank the scene with wood fuel piled up against one wall. The background and the sky are crammed with tall, luscious palm trees. A small figure is clinging halfway up a tree; it is obscured in the shadow and could easily be mistaken for a monkey. The long shadows of twilight loom over the village like a threat. With its deep and rich use of colour, staged composition, amber wash, and soft-focus blush, this image exudes an exotic and paternalistic aura that rivals the work of any colonialist painter of the last two centuries. The only text consists of 'Shell Chemicals' accompanied by the logo, and a sentence that reads, 'Villagers in Zanzibar prepare polystyrene beads from Shell Chemicals to pour into pit latrines and so suffocate the larvae of the mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, carrier of the deforming disease elephantiasis/ The lure of the exotic follows to the last detail: latrine pits, poisonous mosquitoes with long names, and most delicious of all - elephantiasis. There is clear juxtaposition here between 'primitive' and modern. Of course, it is likely true that rural and village life is the norm for most

Villagers in Zanzibar prepare polystyrene beads from Shell Chemicals to pour into pit latrines and so suffocate the larvae of the mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, carrier of the deforming disease elephantiasis.

Shell Chemicals

144 The Myth of Green Marketing Africans. But we usually see such scenes only in the international media, when crises, such as famine and war, affect millions of rural Africans. This advertisement appeared around 1990 and can be contrasted to the more common image of Africa in the popular press at the time. It was not of rural African life, which remains a mystery to most Westerners. The coverage was primarily political and almost entirely urban in location. The most obvious example was the frequently featured, powerful, and articulate Nelson Mandela speaking to the world in his suit and tie. There were many other African politicians, doctors, journalists, community organizers, aid workers, and public figures who dominated the news. These people fly around in airplanes and live much of the time in large modern cities with enclosed fires and toilets. All have shoes. This is not even to mention the quality of weapons used throughout the continent, which are of the most modern available in the international arms market. Within this advertisement, the modern is represented by Shell Chemicals in the form of boiled polystyrene beads. The superiority of modernity is acknowledged by the attention and dependence of the barefoot people, who cook on open fires in the dirt and do not have indoor plumbing. Shell is the knowledge-holder, a status it achieves, like IBM, through science and technology. All of these associations of power, control, superior knowledge, civilization, and modernity are boiling together in that pot. Notice how the jungle is dark and dense, almost menacing. The closer one moves towards the cauldron, the lighter the scene becomes, until in the centre one reaches the bright, white glow of enlightenment.5 This isn't science; it's theatre. The denouement (if Shell is lucky) is that criticisms of the company's political and economic behaviour in South Africa, as well as its environmental and social irresponsibility in Nigeria, will be marginalized or at least undermined by claims of an international leadership and civilizing role. Again, the idea of a mythic suture is useful here. As was the case with the IBM image, if one considers a reading of only the photograph in the Shell advertisement, one would not presume it to be promoting the chemical industry. Associations and connotations explode around this image. Most come right out of the history of empire. The threat to productivism in this advertisement is provided by the nagging voice of Shell's concrete actions in the material realm, especially in Nigeria and South Africa. Thus, contradictory readings are very possible. How does the reader decide which meaning to produce? Todorov may be right

Analysis of Examples 145 when he suggests that the text contains directions for its own reading. But there are conflicting indicators, and they lead along sometimes quite disparate paths. Is Shell a profiteering, socially irresponsible, racist, environmentally destructive criminal? Or has the narrative of an otherwise harmonious discourse of goodness been inadvertently and temporarily interrupted? In this photographic expression of the green consumerist myth, Shell is the good patriarch and the petrochemical industry is the knowledgeable guide in a complex modern world. They lead the reader over the cleavage in productivist hegemony, and the suture is completed. They do so by encouraging the observer to produce one interpretation rather than another. The myth of green consumerism provides a rational explanation because it appropriates (i.e., it rationalizes) events into its own credible story by ensuring a friendly signification of symbols, which could also facilitate a hostile reading. Thus, readers (modern consumers) draw their decision at the point of undecidability from the realm of myth. Key symbols in this advertisement will help to identify which myth they will activate: the Shell logo, the words 'polystyrene' and 'chemicals/ the name Shell Chemicals itself, the modern scientific associations in the sentence, the First-World/ Third-World helping message, the notions of humans against a hostile Nature, or the intimation that humans through modern knowledge and techniques have the ability and right to control the physical environment. Barthes reminds us that it is not only the details themselves that signify. Connotations can function in the same way. Because of the conditioning factors of linear time and narrative structure, when one enters the myth at any point, one is invariably pulled along to its resolution. Thus, on the mythic, abstract plane, resolution is comfortingly assured. Yet that decision has been made in the material world and has material world consequences that may be less comforting. Choice is a gesture of empowerment and is never entirely passive. Consequently, this suturing is a performative and functions as a reification of productivist values themselves. Every time we reproduce the discourse, we reinforce our own position as subjects of productivist hegemony. In this way the aspect of green consumerism that focuses on expert knowledge and judgment, authoritative leadership, and trust provides the reader with a rational, common sense explanation for apparent cracks in productivism's promises. This continuity of productivist discourse in the abstract plane of perceptions, beliefs, and moral judgments effectively sutures the rupture in hegemony. As well, Shell maintains its corporate image of trusted professional in the marketplace.

146 The Myth of Green Marketing Image and text in the Shell advertisement work together much as they do in the IBM example: to harmonize discordant voices. Fear of the savage (i.e., the pre-modern) is represented here by the dark palm trees, 'primitive' conditions, native people, poisonous insects, and elephantiasis. Desire for the exotic is represented by palm trees, 'primitive' conditions, native people in African dress, poisonous insects, and elephantiasis. Harmony comes in the form of civilization. It is represented by bringing light to the darkness, improving the 'primitive' conditions, putting shirts and trousers on the native people, disempowering poisonous insects, and eradicating elephantiasis. This is progress; it is a movement from 'primitive' to modern, from simple to complex, from manual to high tech, from superstition to scientific knowledge. Through the inevitableness of linear time, the concept of progress is 'a narrative structure through which we move from scarcity to abundance' (Xenos 1989, 35). Consequently, the Tightness and legitimacy of productivist discourse is reinforced in its role as provider, science has strengthened its epistemological security, and the leadership status of business and industry is reaffirmed. Although there are concrete reasons for cynicism regarding the role and activities of business, it can still lay claim to legitimate leadership. As we saw with IBM, this is less because individual entrepreneurs see themselves as public advocates and more because the leadership role is an object in a discourse of social organization. Moral Tightness and concern for the common good are necessary qualities of a legitimate leader. Of course, there are many actual exceptions, but they do not affect the nature of the role of leader or its connotations. 'Leader' is an abstract understanding of something. It is this abstraction as a symbol within a symbolic universe that has the aura and power to captivate subjects' hopes and desires, will and commitment to act. Of course, we do not live entirely within a world of abstractions: we occupy the material realm at the same time, and it does not always conform to the expectations of our discursive universes. In these cases, however, it is often the 'real' world that must adjust. It can be argued that even the most principled individual shifts back and forth between belief in abstract moral principles and the pragmatic exigencies of everyday life in the material plane. Furthermore, that abstract, discursive plane is a cacophony of voices calling us in different directions. One makes decisions, interpretations, and valuations, only to have to remake them. What seems common sense at any particular historical juncture is unlikely to be a consistent and reliably predictive tool for making judgments in the world of actual events.

Analysis of Examples 147 It is plausible that one's personal security and confidence to act within what often appears to be an irreconcilably confused material realm is based on our privileging of the abstract plane, where at least myths and belief structures offer reassuring and comforting patterns. It is possible to act because one believes that the consequences of that act are controllable and predictable; in other words, that intentions can be reliably actualized in the physical world. This is an act of faith in the face of an often arbitrary and disappointing material world. Consequently, we must maintain the apparent coherence of the abstract plane that functions as the context of decision and ground for premeditated action. This is not the world of forms envisaged by Plato. The world of material objects and the world of definitions and ideas about objects are not alternative forms of the same thing. The abstract is not primary to substance but is symbiotic with it (this is not to say dialectic). Or, as Hay den White puts it, 'Narrativizing mediates between the real and the imaginary, between event and meaning' (1980, 4). Thus, while productivist ethics and the dirty production practices of business and industry may have led to the environmental crisis, and although court cases increasingly pile up against corporate polluters, the violators can still cloak themselves in the mysticism of moral leadership. McDonald's Take the case of McDonald's Corporation. Like Wal-Mart, McDonald's in the late 19808 and early 19905 was actively creating a high profile as a leader in finding solutions to environmentally related problems in its industry. This was not all rhetoric. The company had introduced and supported significant change in environmental issues in the fastfood industry; its 1989 Annual Report centred on this topic. In 1990 McDonald's committed U.S.$60 million to the purchase of recycled paper products and U.S.$100 million to buying recycled building material. This program, called 'McRecycle USA,' was intended to encourage and stimulate its suppliers to develop more environmentally sound products by providing a market for them. McDonald's has also done research on recycling and waste disposal at restaurant level. Of particular interest here, however, is an environmental impact study it commissioned in 1976 from the Stanford Research Institute. The subject was a comparison of paper and foam packaging and included all aspects of the product life from manufacturing to disposal. Polystyrene plastic won. According to the study, paper products used with food are coated and as a result are almost impossible to recycle. Polystyrene uses less

148 The Myth of Green Marketing energy than paper in its production, conserves natural resources, represents less weight and volume in landfills, and is recyclable (Hume 1991, 32). As a result of the study, McDonald's switched to polystyrene wherever possible. It must be emphasized that this study was conducted in a scientific manner by an outside agency. Consequently, it had the aura of Tightness and truth that a techno-scientific culture can provide. Nevertheless, in November 1990 McDonald's switched back to paper packaging. Although the Environmental Defense Fund supported this move in December 1990 on the basis of their own investigations, the company made the shift because, as the president of McDonald's U.S.A. stated, 'Although some scientific studies indicate that foam packaging is environmentally sound, our customers just don't feel good about it. So we're changing.' Consider other statements by the company around this question: Whenever you move and act decisively, you'll be criticized. Our commitment is to do what's right for the environment. McDonald's has fostered a [corporate] culture in which we're all called to lead . And when you're a leader, you'll make decisions that aren't unanimously popular. We know that. Our core concern always will be serving our customers hot food fast. But we know our customers also want this environmentally friendly decision process. (Hume 1991, 32)

The case of McDonald's is useful in this discussion because it highlights some difficult contradictions that can develop at the rhetorical level around the dual claim that, although the purpose of a corporation is to stay in business and make private profits for its stockholders, it can still make claims to public leadership and to guardianship of the common good. Even if one were to argue that those discourses are used merely as the convenient instruments of corporate greed, the point still stands that such public relations promotions are worth the investment only if enough people accept the theory that private accumulation is compatible with public interest (the invisible-hand theory of Adam Smith). This thesis is widely accepted in Western capitalist society, and green consumerism trades on the concomitant belief that private corporations can make a sincere commitment to the environment. Although Bookchin, Irvine, Ponton, Mellor, and others probably would not be sympathetic, Elkington, Button, and Seymour and Girardet take it as given. I emphasize this point because it is not clear from the above

Analysis of Examples 149 quotations, considered together, exactly where McDonald's commitment lies, although the company appears to declare that it lies with the environment. On the other hand, it also states that its 'core concern' is with serving hot food fast. There is no problem here as long as the fastfood industry can be considered compatible with conserving the environment, and as long as McDonald's perceives its customers to be concerned with the environment. There are two things going on here, which highlight the problem with corporate claims to public leadership. On the one hand, McDonald's is 'called to lead,' and as such, it has to 'move and act decisively' and take decisions that 'aren't unanimously popular.' These phrases indicate a strong sense of leadership. Theoretically speaking, taking a principled stand regardless of personal risk or sacrifice presumes a strong sense of moral duty and social commitment. The principles should come with the 'calling' and are by definition in the common good. Principles and callings generally are not negotiable or reversible. They are the responsibility of the morally superior. On the other hand, after evoking the aura of leadership, McDonald's declares in the next breath that its 'core concern' is in serving hot food fast to customers. Remember that the company changed back to paper packaging on the basis of public pressure, in contradiction of 'scientific' evidence 'gathered and analyzed' by an independent firm. In other words, McDonald's caved into public pressure on what should have been a point of principle in order to ensure public relations kudos and the highest profits for the corporation (also see Kleiner 1991, 39). The point is not to demonstrate that all private companies are evil, manipulative, lying, greedy, self-seeking enterprises incapable of genuine commitment to the public good. But these examples do illustrate that there are serious questions to raise around such sudden claims to leadership. For instance, who called McDonald's to lead? Why does this self-appointment go unchallenged; that is, why and how does it make sense, and to whom? As well, how can McDonald's be called to lead in the fast-food industry and in environmental activism at the same time? Mobil The natural right of business to lead is a thread that runs through the myth of green consumerism. A cruder example is presented by the Mobil Chemical Company. By the late 19803 all the major petrochemical companies had on the market some form of 'degradable' plastic garbage

150 The Myth of Green Marketing bag. There was considerable controversy around the term with some producers preferring the term, 'photodegradable/ Such was abuse of the claims of manufacturers that at one point '35 U.S. states were considering legislation with regards to plastics/ The pressure was high to develop a more environmentally sound product; some states were thinking of eliminating non-degradable products. Mobil put its trash bag on the market, it stated, only because it was 'faced with consumer demand, regulatory situations, trade demands and competitive offerings/ It was a confessed public relations exercise, as the quote from a company executive in the last chapter makes clear. As well, a Mobil spokesperson is quoted as saying, 'we're talking out of both sides of our mouths when we want to sell bags. Degradability is just a market tool' (Dadd and Carothers 1990, 11). Thus, with acknowledged self-interest and with bad faith (publicly stating they did not believe in the product), Mobil entered the degradable trash bag wars. On 12 June 1990 seven states separately charged Mobil Chemical with deceptive advertising and consumer fraud over its degradability claims for Hefty trash bags, its packaging claims being misleading at best, untruthful at worst. Yet Mobil, like IBM and Shell, still projected itself as a leader: There are better answers than degradability ... if we've played a role in that by taking the heat for some of it, then at the end of the day we can say that we had something to contribute' (Lawrence 1991,12-13). Mobil indicates that it knows what the 'real' answers are; that is, it holds important and credible knowledge. Its role in the improvement was to 'take the heat/ In other words, the company is sacrificing its own good reputation and taking a financial loss so that in the end we can be saved environmentally. There is something quite Christian about this stance, and it reinforces the selfless and common-good associations of leadership. It is the notion of sacrifice for the communal good that carries the ethical. This allows behaviour that may be considered corrupt and deceitful to be also interpreted as giving and helping, that is, morally superior. The green consumerist discourse is a popular discourse. As such, the environmental misadventures of corporations are more inclined to be of interest to the media and become public knowledge, unlike the activities of, say, the international arms trade. The numbers, commitment, and power of grassroots environmental movements have grown in recent years in tandem with the credibility and clout of career ecologists. Evidently, all this development has had an impact. Corporations feel the pressure to behave at least a little more responsibly (and generate the

Analysis of Examples 151 most public relations benefit from it). This change indicates that while productivism may not be under immediate threat, many of its promises are turning sour, and its ability to command unquestioning allegiance is being eroded. If, in fact, consumers were so completely the uncritical, unthoughtful, easily manipulated dupes that many within the green movement would have them, these corporations could rely on the convenient and paternalistic image of productivism to perpetuate itself without question. But as Levi-Strauss, Slotkin, and others have noted, myths must be continually renewed. This is why absurdities like Shell's 'white man's burden' advertisement can speak to us from straight out of a time warp and still make sense. As several theorists of narrative have mentioned, the reader reorders events and treats time in a rather plastic fashion in order to make sense. Several possible meanings can be derived from the advertisement. All available discourses are latent. It is the leadership function that has the credibility, legitimacy, and authority to create sense out of this cacophony by encouraging the reader to produce one story over another. This is not a necessary interpretation; it facilitates one particular reading but does not determine it. While it is possible to read the photograph in the Shell advertisement as a racist, patronizing cover-up, the text, which functions as the voice of the authoritative leader, makes sense by simply describing what is going on in the picture. It works for many people because this explanation of what Shell is doing in Africa comfortably affirms well-established economic, political, and cultural patterns. At the same time, the new front of the anti-Shell lobby, the ecological critique, is effectively disallowed through not naming it. The IBM advertisement works slightly differently. Here, the ecological critique is subsumed in the very act of naming it. This is also how most packaging and product advertisements function as part of the green consumerist myth. They moderate any radical edge of the attack. Green consumerism works (when it works, that is) by speaking from within the environmental movement (in its largest sense). The myth acknowledges that yes, there is a real problem here. By naming the environmental 'problem' as an issue of type of consumption instead of consumption per se, it effectively squeezes out the radical critique of productivism. The green consumerist myth not only names the problem, it names the responsible parties: abstract forces and individuals. If we are the cause, then we are also the solution. If we all do our little bit, the planet will be saved. Those authoritative leaders will help us to identify this little bit as well, 'little' being the operative word. By admitting there is a problem, taking the lead, isolating the issue to be tackled,

152 The Myth of Green Marketing apportioning an equal share of the blame to everyone, and providing concrete simple answers, green consumerism reassures the hesitant that the environmental question is of minor importance and that those in positions of knowledge and power are dealing firmly with the situation, as they always have. The consumer need only trust them and attend to their instructions upon rational assessment of the information they provide. To follow this course is to privilege rationality over irrationality, reformist environmentalism over radical ecologism. The shaping of undecidability within the comforting contours of rationality precludes a more fundamental questioning of productivist logics. Thus, the answer provided by green consumerism is rational because it is coherent with productivism, the dominant thought paradigm penetrating every aspect of our lives. Green consumerism makes sense. That is why people are attracted to it; they are not irrational, immoral, or uninformed. Quite the opposite: they are rational within productivist logics, are moral in their desire to do their bit, and are well informed by popular media and publications (with marketers and advertisers having the edge). From this point of view, harmony is the problem, not the solution. The notion of social harmony must be continually reinforced against the destructive powers of its own absurdity. Harmony is a strategic construct, which we extrapolate to Nature. We then 'discover' it there and claim harmony to be a physical law of the universe. What gets finessed in this shell game are the notions of both invention and strategy. Harmony, then, is never an innocent discourse. It has been used in the West as a tool of domination for 2,000 years. It has a number of manifestations. Several examples come to mind: patriarchy, theories of communism, traditional conservatism, Plato's myth of the metals, and so-called ecofascism. Harmony is not given; it is constructed. It is crucial that we see it as such, because it is too important to leave to metaphysical forces. If we believe that harmony is the natural order of things, and that we have only to stop interfering for equilibrium and harmony to return - in politics, in economics, in societal relations, in ecosystems - we may be less imaginative in our approaches to problem solving and insufficiently vigilant with what little harmony seems to exist around us. What we need to fight for and establish actively is taken as given, even in the green literature. For example, Goodin's Green Political Theory makes many interesting points, and it is reasonable, as he suggests, that people may well need some sense of pattern, coherence, and unity in their lives. But does the desire for coherence need to be the product of a relationship with some Big Organizing Factor outside oneself and outside com-

Analysis of Examples 153 munity? This position requires more argumentation. Furthermore, to locate an inspiration for harmony in nature is possible only on the exclusion of inconvenient evolutionary behaviours, in which feeble, helpless creatures are often brutally eliminated. If harmony in nature is defined as balance and balance as equality, then it must be remembered that nature has no mercy for the weak and the vulnerable. If it is important not to model human society on harmony, but to describe the relationship between humans and the physical world, then we are situating the human animal outside Nature, because, as Goodin notes, harmony implies two separate existences. The harmony aimed at in the green consumerist myth is the narrative harmony of conflict resolution. The rupture in goodness has to be made right for business and industry to maintain their leadership status. Mobil had to work hard not to be signified as opportunist marketeer. Green consumerism is so reassuring because it gives the impression that something is being done about 'the problem/ all without disturbing the auto-dynamism of evolution as it predictably unfolds in teleological certainty towards that hi-tech industrial Nirvana that awaits all civilized peoples. The ecological critique at its most radical and complex puts into question almost every aspect of the way people in 'advanced' Western society live their lives and understand their very existence. Consequently, for the green consumerist myth successfully to suture the rupture that reveals the contingent character of productivism, it must ensure the continuance of received discourses. This gap is a point of undecidability. Different explanations and interpretations are available. The popular media carry the messages of business and industry like the ones discussed here. At the same time, they report environmental criticisms made by high-profile actors, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. But productivist discourse has a 2OO-year head start on even the most credible ecologists. Consequently, environmental activists are not simply providing scientific truths in a vacuum. Metaphorically speaking, it is possible to row upstream, but one does not do so by simply putting a boat in the water. The boat will go downstream. Perhaps this is why a number of radical ecologists are baffled by the phenomenon of green consumerism. In spite of strong intuitive and aesthetic feelings for Nature, many look at the ecological data from inside the myth of scientism. (By scientism I mean the mythic existence, not the actual practices or beliefs of practising scientists.) In this view, the world is ruled by the logics of pure fact engaged with absolute physical laws and metaphysi-

154 The Myth of Green Marketing cal Reason. When large masses of people fail to see the discrepancy between protecting the Earth's ecosystem and using up more resources in production of ever greener products, those who have provided what they believe to be true facts, judge the consumer to be either immoral or subject to false consciousness. But facts do not speak for themselves. It is only in narrative theory that they appear to speak the truth of their own voice. Data are selected and interpreted in different ways by different interests. When selected data are placed adjacent to historically accepted beliefs, they are subsumed metonymically within them and serve primarily to reinforce the coherence and reliability of tradition. Any disruptive potential this information may have is disempowered. This is how corporations turn environmental losses into public relations gains. These discourses enjoy the authority of tradition and historical constancy, and given that they control the definition, these discourses also can point to ostensible 'success' in the material world of everyday life. Let us now consider how two of the more important facilitating discourses, classical economics and liberal democracy, interweave. These discourses are not discrete belief systems and activities, but they overlap and reinforce each other. They function in a plastic way within the myth of green consumerism in order to domesticate criticisms of different aspects of the political, economic, or cultural status quo. One major dynamic that shapes habits of mind in modern Western societies is the concept of market forces. Since Adam Smith, capitalist theory has understood the market to be a natural imperative that takes supply and demand as its logic. Demand is a collective noun referring to aggregated individual preference. There is no place for qualitative questions and judgments here, not because they are impossible to define, but because it is the centre promise of market theory that its invisible hand will be just and the common good actualized. Human intervention may distort the natural fairness of the market and have disastrous social and economic consequences. The invisible hand is the hand of Nature, because, as we have seen, nature is a metaphor for the law of necessity. By definition, it is controllable by no one and acts in the interest of no special group. For this reason it is considered fair and impartial.6 The market, given these associations, is the arbiter of right and wrong, success and failure, good and bad. Whatever the outcome, once a situation or issue has been tested by the market, its truth and value will be revealed. Although we think immediately of economics or capitalism when we consider the question of markets, it is that everyday, fuzzy abstraction,

Analysis of Examples 155 'market forces/ that is of interest here, because it is the vehicle through which economic theory has been invisibly synthesized into our habits of mind. 'Marketism' is a key discourse in Western society, one that also has political and social manifestations and is a central assumption of the green consumerist myth. Consequently, its authority finds a multifold resonance throughout the environmentalist manuals, as well as the marketing and advertising texts. Even though, as mentioned earlier, a 'problem' with the environment7 is acknowledged, the market, in spite of its productivist and expansionist associations is still seen by many as an avenue for change. This is because problem identification and resolution is confined within the horizon of the thinkable and imaginable. In this sense, the ground itself is not at issue. By always speaking from within existing discourses, the Tightness and coherence of those discourses are reaffirmed without an argument ever being made; indeed, they are never even named. They are the wallpaper of the mind. Consequently, for those looking to follow existing elites out of the ecological quagmire, there is no contradiction between conservationist and expansionist logics, or between ecological deterioration and consumer production. This reaffirmation of market forces is a constant theme of green consumerism. It is also reinforced by liberal democracy, which basically functions with the same dynamic. Not only are candidates marketed like laundry detergent, but the same rational autonomous individual, maximizing her self-interest in the political marketplace, is the presumed subject. Moreover, participation is the agent of legitimation. John Street notes the collapse of politics into economics when he writes, 'Suddenly it seems as if the key actor in democratic political life is not the citizen; it is the consumer. The democratic choice is the consumer's choice' (1992,145). Both the Wal-Mart and the McDonald's examples are illustrations of this synthesis. The spokesperson for Wal-Mart states, 'We simply represent the wants and needs of our customers and find ways to empower them.' To represent is to stand in the place of another. We elect political representatives because it is impossible for us all to be in parliament at the same time. That election process is the market out of which it is assumed the common will and interest will emerge. But can Wal-Mart stand in the place of its customers? Is it in the interest of Wal-Mart or the customers that they do so? Times of recession and high unemployment are also times of high cost for business borrowing, increasing retail competition, and low stock turnovers. Whose interest will Wal-Mart represent then?

156 The Myth of Green Marketing This is an issue that has implications for business generally. Nagging questions continue to resonate. Who asked Wal-Mart and McDonald's to lead? Who asked Mobil to sacrifice its good reputation? By what authority did Shell take up a civilizing mission in Africa? Who gave Wal-Mart the mandate to represent? Furthermore, how can these companies make claims to knowing what is right and what is true? How can green consumer advocates be so sure that commerce and industry are compatible with ecological concerns? Finally, where or towards what do these business leaders lead? The answer to these questions is productivism, that godfather of modernity and ecological decline. Just as the clerical class is the legitimate liaison with spiritual forces, the business class in Western capitalist society is the legitimate liaison with market forces; its power to manipulate and control events is considerable. A belief system and its theocrats, however, cannot predict or determine all thoughts and behaviours of their subjects. They keep trying anyway. There is no doubt that general awareness of the ecological consequences of industrial Western history has increased in the last ten years. That this change has had a material impact is made clear by the scramble of marketers and advertisers to cash in and the grudging agreement of industry to clean up its dirty habits. Let us conclude by returning again to the considerable slippage between the language of economics and that of politics. 'Every purchase is a vote for or against the environment/ claims Kleiner in an article in Harvard Business Review (1991, 39). In the Introduction' to Elkington and Hailes's Green Consumer Guide Anita (Body Shop) Roddick writes, 'We can use our ultimate power, voting with our feet and wallets' (1988, x). 'Customers vote at the cash register,' another retailer bluntly admits (Lesh 1991, 38). Such statements maintain the coherence of productivist discourse by maintaining the language of its logics. Speaking about a business transaction (buying and selling) as though it were a democratic election in which the informed, rational individuals of liberal theory cast their votes with the intention of establishing the common will, functions to purify the parochial realm of business self-interest. Consumer demand is the democratic will of the people. In this way, the narrative of classical economics speaks itself, legitimized through associations of democracy and mandate. The objective character of the market and the aura of democracy also reinforce the idea of non-intervention in the economy. This serves the discourse of productivism well. Business leaders are the guardians of

Analysis of Examples 157 market forces. Any form of intervention is akin to vote-tampering. So it follows that ecologists are not qualified to give advice in this esoteric area, which must be kept pure and natural. Again, it is not enough for activists or researchers simply to provide information. In economic discourse, as in political discourse, data are a plastic resource to be appropriated into the strategies of interests. This relationship between market forces and democratic forces helps to explain how McDonald's could, on the one hand, make claims of leadership and, on the other, state that it was following the collective will of its customers. This paradox cannot be compared to Gramsci's notion of a dialectic between leader and followers. The former is merely a changing of strategy in order always to maintain the moral high ground. It is not apparently contradictory, because market forces are never wrong. Market forces also are what makes sense of 'doing one's bit/ In the aggregation, when all the little bits are counted, the consequence will be a net good. This is not to be confused with any notion of community, because it does not take some notion of a common good as its starting point. It takes the atomistic self-maximizer as its starting point, and the Good, or at least the collective will, is by definition the product of market forces. This is an important distinction, because an aggregate is a sum; it has no necessary ethical implications. The common will is a tautological category, not an ethical one. The moral component is not argued over, campaigned for, or even intended (in any obvious sense of the word). Market forces give us, in a sense, an accidental common will. Through its connection to human community, this quantitative sum becomes a qualitative Good. Even so, the duty to do one's little bit is a duty to the common good. Moreover, if it is a sense of obligation that allows guilt to exist, it may be the anxiety of duty and guilt that allows green consumers to be interpolated/manipulated by marketers and advertisers. Something must motivate the consumer. The collective will is an aggregate, not a description of individual motivation. Marketplace thinking, then, misleads because it assumes that what customers want can be read back from their aggregated purchasing decisions. This post hoc ergo propter hoc logic allows businesses (such as McDonald's and Wal-Mart) and marketers to insist that they are simply just conforming to the will of the people. But as Goodin argues, it is a theory of value that motivates action. Decisions are made by producers on the basis of consumer demand. Because business leaders are the high priests of market forces,

158 The Myth of Green Marketing their status gives them moral authority. Consequently, they have an aura of credibility enhanced by leadership characteristics of being knowledge holders and truth recognizers. Thus, even if the ethical consumer were to start out with a set of principles, a sense of obligation, and a will to act for the common good, the political possibilities of the moment are lost by running the whole event backward, thereby appropriating the intention. The green consumer is robbed of her very important personal empowerment (however small) and her ethical stand. In effect, the subject is denied agency and becomes again the aggregated monad. Thus, green marketing strategists, advertisers, and environmental activists usurp the moral high ground, reinforcing the superiority of elites and the coherence of productivist discourse.

Conclusion

To paraphrase Foucault paraphrasing Magritte, this is not a manifesto. On the other hand, neither is it an empty esoteric exercise. If we are seriously to address the environmental problems facing contemporary societies, we need to reinvent the human mind, not to eliminate Utopias or myths, technologies or science, but to free the imagination from the limitations of a finite world and absolute ethics. The topic of everyday domestic consumption is important for at least three major reasons. First, it is a prime mover of resources through the ecosystem. Second, it is the source of aggregate demand in the marketplace. Third, it has potential to be a site of ecological political resistance. It may appear that I have been making something out of nothing. Exactly the point: my objective has been to expose the 'nothingness' of consumerism. By illustrating the silent interweaving of economic, political, and cultural discourses embedded within green consumerism, I have intended to show how something has become nothing, that is, how the dystopian side of economic expansionism, voting as politics, and restrictive cultural beliefs have become invisible to even the critical eye. The goal has been to illustrate the naturalization (the nothingization) of self-interested discourses and their power to seduce even in the name of their own destruction. Yet as I have argued here, the dismissive attitude common among ecologists regarding the topic of consumerism inhibits the opportunities for politicization and radical change. This is unfortunate, because the long-term implications of an informed consumer may help to destablize expansionistic common sense. The political moment may be lost, however, scooped up by the marketing and advertising industries. There are numerous reasons for this loss. A major cause lies in the

160 The Myth of Green Marketing nature of research institutions. Academically trained researchers are educated in discrete fields; even in the study of human behaviour such as politics, sociology, and economics, scientistic approaches still dominate. This isolation discourages cross-disciplinary study. There is much worthwhile work being done in all areas, but without calling into question guiding assumptions, research contributions may be double-edged swords - illuminating a temporary manifestation, but leaving imperatives unarticulated, thereby keeping them safely beyond question. This is not usually intentional, and in any case, no one can account for every detail in a piece of research. Indeed, the best one can hope for is a small intervention in an ongoing debate. This book has that limited purpose. The constant theme here has been the insidious persistence of productivist hegemony, even as it speaks in the voice of environmental concern. The success of this discourse in maintaining its coherence and appeal lies more in its power of seduction than in its ability to manipulate. This is hegemony. But that process does not always reassure the consumer and hence deflect challenges to the authority of productivism. It must be remembered that in the heuristic story written here, green consumerism as a social myth attempts to smooth over the questioning of consumptionexpansion logics, but is not always successful. Indeed, it is one of my premises that total closure of the social is impossible. Whether or not one is seduced by the implicit promises of green consumerism possibly has more to do with whom/what an individual takes to be a legitimate authority. I have argued that, for large numbers of people, this is likely the traditional voices of expansionistic economics, representative democratic politics, and liberal cultural traditions. But this is not an exclusionistic statement. For others, corporate promotions of environmental responsibility of whatever manifestation are viewed with suspicion and disbelief for the very reason that they originate from these same voices. Likewise, the authority may be that of the emotions or the spirit. For the narratological logic of the implicit mythic story and the concomitant necessity for resolution, it matters little what the initial 'hook7 was. Once a subject enters the narrative, resolution is symbolically actualized. Public relations campaigns and corporate statements are useful for illustrating the complex interrelations of this matrix. Other forms of green consumerism, however, evoke the myth in the same way. The analyses of chapter 5 are meant to be illustrative of a logic, not comprehensive of substance. Nor does green consumerism have to plug every

Conclusion 161 hole in the threadbare fabric of productivism. It is argued here that the emergence of convenient, sympathetic social myths is just one way discourses under stress expand and reformulate in order to homogenize a more fundamental threat. As mentioned in the introduction, productivist discourse is always being dogged by its own dystopian shadow. This is because productivism, for all its modernistic glitz and confident omniscience has never been able to seduce entirely the whole range of its victims. There has always been criticism of its social and environmental consequences. A similar ambiguity infects the green consumerist myth. This contingency is inevitable, because the social is never static. Just as all individuals cannot be interpolated with the same voice, no one form of green consumerism can be said to be more effective than another, because each depends on the relationship between the corpus, productivism, and the individual. Neither is this a fixed relationship, as indicated by marketers and environmentalists in their comments regarding the growing cynicism of consumers. It is also difficult to claim effectiveness or failure for the myth of green consumerism because there is no clear explanation of its relative decline, at least at the promotional level. The high point of public visibility was reached in the early 19905. By 1994 the barrage of green consumerist messages had been reduced. Does this decline indicate its success at hegemonizing the environmental critique? Given the growing seriousness and entrenchment of ecological problems, it is unlikely that any one reaction, such as the generation of social myths, could enjoy such an impact. Furthermore, the high public profile of green consumerism was largely the consequence of marketers and advertisers attempting to cash in on the heightened public concern for the environment. Although they may have moved on to new gimmicks, many substantive changes remain. This is where continued work on the issues of quantity and quality of consumption is quietly going on. Examples are growing technical and scientific development in the areas of waste management and recycling, development of government regulation concerning labelling claims, and the establishment of community action groups. Of course, not all forms of green consumerism are to be considered equal if truly effective ecological improvement is to be achieved. Those that promote absolute reduction of consumption and a challenging of expansionistic economic logics clearly would have a better chance of actually affecting environmental problems. Conversely, those promotions that are largely empty corporate hype would be less effective.

162 The Myth of Green Marketing Questions of types and effectiveness of green consumer forms, however, are the territory of sociological surveys and cannot be adequately discussed here. Some of the existing writing on green consumerism from the environmental movement has immediate and useful application, providing household hints, such as how to reduce water usage in the home and how to increase energy efficiency. There are also brand-name product lists to assist the all-round ethical consumer. Other well-known figures have dismissed the issue, however, not so much because it is unworthy of investigation but because we already know all we need to about it. I cannot argue strongly enough against this elitist dismissal. Indeed, as Daniel Miller states, The argument that there is a thing called capitalist society which renders its population entirely pathological and dehumanized ... is somewhat suspicious' (1987,167). Consumerism impinges on so many aspects of daily life in modern industrialized society that it is almost impossible to study. But it is through simple, everyday decisions that we reinforce the hegemony of the productivist status quo. That I should end up with more questions than answers was probably inevitable. I have considered the unquestioned acceptance of some central vocabulary. By considering the historical conditions of emergence of concepts that function as nodal points, we can acquire a more complicated picture of their political nature. In chapter 2 it was argued that the resignification of consumption as a social and cultural good was necessary in the gradual move from a mercantilist to a capitalist economic model. This is important because, as discussed in chapters 3 and 4, many environmental activists and theorists believe that it is possible for large masses of people simply and abruptly to reject consumerism. They want to re-signify 'consume' instantaneously, back to the preeighteenth-century meaning of exhaust and destroy, as though modern consumerism were simply a semantic mistake, soon corrected when pointed out. Recent ecological science is unlikely, however, to erase 200 years of cultural belief and commitment. Post-structuralist and post-modern theoretical opportunities have opened up new ways of thinking the political. Interdisciplinary research, taking language seriously, the importance of culture, the decentring of economic base, and the movement towards the theorization of constructed foundations and essences have influenced a generation. This work has been of that spirit. As illustrated here, language is not transparent. Much work that focuses on meaning in context has

Conclusion 163 been done in recent years. This advance is important, because, as we have seen, the market, advertising, and public relations industries are far ahead of the green movement and environmental political theory in the understanding of signifying systems. In 1993 these ideas even appeared in the marketing publication Journal of the Market Research Society. In their article, Valentine and Evans use a linguistic model to help in the interpretation of consumer responses. Social and cultural frames are used by the individual to encode an experience. 'Because language and language systems are the rules of culture, the rules of language become the rules of the code/ they write (1993,125). The article so impressed the industry that it won an award for best technical paper. It is this type of contextualized understanding of green consumerism that is missing in the radical ecological critique of green consumerism. This may partly be a consequence of a biocentric ontology that (for good reason) emphasizes our likeness to other creatures and culminates in a concept of human nature that minimizes cultural need. Extreme biocentrism ignores inescapable actualities of living in a highly urbanized society, which is constantly bombarded by popular cultural products (Wernick's 'promotional culture'). This is the hyperworld of the simulacrum. There is much interesting research regarding consumerism per se that has not significantly affected the issue of green consumerism. As discussed in chapter 2, at least since Mandeville it has been accepted that subjects create themselves, in part, through visual cultural codes. Individual as well as social identity is sculpted out of an array of sign systems. There are a number of cultural writers who are astute analysts of social and cultural indicators. Such a nuanced eye does not seem to reveal itself in the literature on green consumerism from the environmental movement, whether for or against the practice itself. This lack reinforces the need for an opening of analytical curiosity towards some idea of consumerism as plastic medium of identity construction. Individuals say something about themselves through their purchasing decisions, that is, if we accept the notion of identity construction. To admit this premise would be to disrupt the biocentric notion of identity so central to deep green commitment. The general insistence of deep ecologists on a concept of nature as finite and material may continue to preclude non-essentialist and non-foundationalist theory from having a significant impact on the debate. This situation is very unfortunate, because consumerism is far too important an issue to leave to marketers and industrialists, who have absolutely no interest in reducing consumption.

164 The Myth of Green Marketing Research on green consumerism must be creative, imaginative, and interdisciplinary if strategies for reducing consumption are to be realized. As green consumerism has clearly shown, the marketplace is a site of political struggle at the level of the ordinary and everyday (although I am not arguing that it is effective for greens). Moreover, because women bear the major responsibility for the maintenance of households, this is the realm where many women have knowledge, skill, and motivation, especially when it concerns their families. Mary Mellor is right when she identifies consumerism as a site of potential political power for women. Perhaps one good aspect of a generally ailing world economy is that it gives more relative power to the consumer. Nevertheless, it is not possible to be optimistic in my conclusions. We have been too long held ransom to productivist hegemony. The ecological crisis is multifarious and seems overwhelming in its implications. Broad, radical structural change is required. This is unlikely to happen. A non-expansionistic economic system would be necessary; one that minimizes consumption and takes international distributive justice to its heart would seriously affect the standard of living in the affluent North. A corresponding social belief system would be necessary to support such a shift. This would include reassessment of our ethical and ontological beliefs. Achievement, success, and satisfaction would have to be redefined, perhaps towards cultural realms, privileging aesthetics, and intuition. The issue of an exponentially expanding human population could not be ignored. Who would engineer and enforce such profound change? Some version of socialist democracy seems unavoidable if ecofascism is to be avoided. The catalogue of radical change is enormous, and it is almost as Utopian a concept as the continuing belief in freeenterprise expansionism. When one looks around this tragic world of ours, it is impossible to be anything but cynical about radical ecological-political or economic change. As I have argued, although we materially exist in a physical ecosystem, we perceive and produce knowledge of that existence within a cultural plane of abstractions, codes, and symbolic systems. Out of this dense field of symbols and ongoing hegemonic struggles, it is possible for consciousness to weave absolute truths and realities that may prove, some time in the future, irreconcilably at odds with ecological exigencies. Productivist hegemony may be unstable - but it is stable enough - as we blithely tend our goats at the edge of the Apocalypse.

Notes

i: Theoretical Considerations i This 'speaking itself frequently comes in the form of historical narrative. But what is the actual historical object that the historical narrative claims to describe faithfully? As F.R. Ankersrnit, Roland Barthes, and a number of other modern writers have noted, since at least Saussure, we can no longer look through language to reality/ The historian's language is not 'a medium wanting to erase itself (Ankersrnit, 1986, 24; Barthes 1983^ 285). Ankersrnit rejects history as description or interpretation and sees it as representation. A set of descriptive history statements constitute a historical narrative, what Ankersrnit terms the 'narrative substance/ It condenses a body of statements about the historical event or ob)ect in question and acts as a 'non-referential dummy/ The narrative substance is a metaphor that functions in place of the referent because we cannot know the referent (Ankersrnit 1988,119-20; 1990, 290). This fact makes rational debate regarding the integrity of historical events and their ability to legitimize the present difficult to sustain. If there is a Derridean or Foucaultian ring to this statement, the analogy is not lost on Ankersrnit. Historiography, he suggests, is the post-modern discipline par excellence, since 'in it (historical) reality yields to the depiction of itself so that we are left with appearances, that is, with the representations mirroring an ever-absent reality' (Ankersrnit 1990, 292-4). Myth-making is historiography, because it produces, re-produces and re-presents histories. It also appropriates current events in order to perpetuate historical truths, such as the coherence and viability of productivist expansionism. What Barthes says of stories could also be said of history writing: 'the "author" is not the person who invents the finest stories but the person who best masters the code which is practiced equally by his listeners7 (1983^ 286).

166 Notes to pages 67-107 3: The Environmental Movement and Consumerism 1 I refer here to his disparaging tone regarding those who subscribe to in Eastern religions, homeopathic medicine, or non-traditional spiritual beliefs (Goodin 1992, 82-3). 2 When Irvine and Ponton write, 'all those little choices we each made, so seemingly insignificant in themselves but so destructive in total/ however, the negative possibility of that aggregated outcome may, in the long term, be the more accurate prediction (1988,10). 3 See Bookchin (1989, i6off), regarding the opposite problem: 'that reformist environmentalism easily lends itself to the lure of statecraft, that is, to participation in electoral, parliamentary, and party-oriented activities. It requires no great change in consciousness to turn a lobby into a party or a petitioner into a parliamentarian. Between a person who humbly solicits from power and another who arrogantly exercises it, there exists a sinister and degenerative symbiosis/ Bookchin is concerned not that existing parties coopt green issues, but that greens can mistakenly believe they are capable of coopting the dominant system. 4: Green Consumerism 1 I do not want to get into this specific political argument here, but he uses as evidence the disastrous environmental record of Eastern Europe. He makes too simple a cause-effect conclusion on the basis of this example. Also see Mclntosh, who does the same thing (1991, 21). One could, in fact, assert the opposite. The 'something inherent7 he refers to is the invisible hand, of course. Far from being our benefactor, it has a lot of destruction to answer for. The free-market system has left a legacy to the twenty-first century, of which global warming and ozone depletion are international examples and Bhopal, Minamata, and Love Canal are local examples This whole line of argument is questionable, in any case, if it presumes ecological management to be an economic experiment. 2 The first quote is by Robert Barrett, general manager, Solid Waste Management Solutions Group for Mobil on the occasion of a symposium he gave in the summer of 1988. The second quote is by Doug Blanke, Minnesota assistant attorney general and director of the Consumer Division, 12 June 1990. Both appear in Lawrence (1991,12-13). It would be impossible to make a catalogue of what Irvine calls 'dirty tricks/ For some other examples see Irvine (1989, chapter 3 passim); the Ecologist (i993a, 79, 87); Barrett (1991, 9); Time (1990, 57); Beers and Capellaro (1991); Garfield (1991); Advertising Age

Notes to pages 107-42 167 (i993b); Rothnie-Jones (1990); Sutter (1989); Dadd and Carothers (1990); Takooshian and Tashjian (1991,44). It is also interesting to note that McDonald's acted similarly when it switched back to paper packaging from polystyrene, even though the impact study it commissioned from the Stanford Research Institute found polystyrene to have less environmental impact. McDonald's responded instead to public opinion polls, which indicated that consumers preferred paper (Hume 1991; Kleiner 1991, 39). Also see Advertising Age (i993b) for comments on the relationship between altruism and sales performance. 5: Analysis of Examples 1 Verene (1979, 246). He also notes that mythos was in struggle with logos, although I would not want to go that far. Also see Ausband (1983, 30). Sorel's myth of the general strike is an obvious example, and as Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy (1990) illustrate with the Nazi myth, stability and instability can form a simultaneous goal. 2 An example would be the sublime landscape painting school in early nineteenth-century Europe (e.g., Caspar David Friedrich). But it was in the colonies where wilderness landscape painting portrayed the arbitrary and unknowable forces of nature more frequently. For example, the Hudson River School in nineteenth-century United States and the Group of Seven in Canada around the time of the First World War. One could argue, however, that the 'new worlds' were envisaged as wild and savage places long before anyone actually ventured there. Consequently, it is unlikely that representations of these places would appear otherwise. Stuart Hall makes much the same argument regarding diary entries of explorers to the Caribbean. 3 Evernden writes, What ecology is may be less important than what it is believed to be' (1992, 8). 4 This advertisement is one in a series of six. Each ad is dominated by a very fine photograph by Dennis Waugh. This is the only photograph of Africa, and it is the most visually ambitious of the six. These advertisements were part of a campaign to enhance Shell's image and to promote their 'core values' of caring, leadership (note), professionalism, and a drive for improvement. The campaign was aimed at the business press. It must be noted that in my analysis of this ad, I am not imputing intention to Shell or to the photographer. (I am analysing all the ads presented in this chapter only as they signify in a world of history and signs.) I am saying that this ad can be read in the way I read it, regardless of the producers' intentions, because the ad is embedded in a historical context that sets the conditions

i68 Notes to pages 142-55 of its reading. The ads in this campaign do provide examples of how Shell products are very useful in a number of different venues. But Shell's extraction practices are acts that are equally a part of the company's material history, and they have had a major impact on its image. If Shell's actions in Nigeria are what it takes to provide leadership, then it is not surprising that the company felt the need to develop a campaign promoting positive images of its activities. 5 I am reminded of this common technique in earlier centuries, used to signify spiritual enlightenment. For example, Carravaggio's Supper at Emmaus: men sit around a table; all is dark behind them. From a table in the centre the glow of spiritual enlightenment radiates. Joseph Wright of Derby's Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump provides an example of scientific enlightenment. 6 In the mystical realm of invisible hand theory, fair and impartial are conflated. But in a society that awards rights to the disadvantaged (in contrast to Nature) and attempts to protect and encourage them, partiality would seem to be a requirement of fairness (assuming fairness meant equal access to ascribed rights). 7 Advertisers and marketers rarely use the term ecosystem, probably because it is too precise. Environment is a much more socially malleable term. There are built environments, working environments, home environments, learning environments, the environs, and so on. In other words, environment may have absolutely nothing to do with ecology, whereas 'ecosystem' does not invite the same ideological slippage.

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Index

Adams, Richard 95, 99, 169 Advertising 11, 27, 43, 49, 58, 79, 88, 91, 92, 94, 96, 99, 107, 109-110, 112, 117-122, 152; early promotion 53; and IBM 127-138, 140; and Mobil 107, 150; and Shell 141-146; and women 109; and Wal-Mart 140; see also Marketing Ankersmit, F.R. 63, 132,165n.,169; see also Narrative substance Appleby, Joyce 44, 47, 48-9, 54, 56, 57, 63, 169 Archambault, Anne 74, 76, 169 Ausband, Stephen 125, 167 n.1,169

Brewer, John 44, 47, 52, 53, 55, 56, 62, 176 Burke, Tom 78, 100, 118, 172 Button, John 93, 98, 99, 103, 107, 114, 148, 171

Campbell, Colin 48-49, 54, 56, 59, 61, 171 Capellaro, Catherine 134, 166 chap. 4 n.2, 170 Capitalism 73, 89, 94, 108, 109, 120, 127, 148, 156; capitalist economics 10, 22, 23 Carey, James 122, 171 Carlassare, Elizabeth 74, 171 Carothers, Andre 104, 141, 150, 167 Barrett, Scott 95, 166 chap. 4 n.2, chap. 4 n.2, 171 169 Class 42, 44-6, 51, 54, 56; see also Barthes, Roland 31-32, 41, 50, 62, 132, Refinability; Social levelling 145, 165n., 170; S/Z 37-8; MytholoColford, Steven 140, 175 gies 35 Beers, David 134, 166 chap. 4 n.2, 170 Common sense 5, 53, 73, 90, 116, 137 Consume 10, 25, 34, 68; changing Berman, Tzeporah 74, 76, 170 definition of, chap. 2, 44, 46, 49, 50; Blumenberg, Hans 31, 170 defined 9 Bookchin, Murray 67, 104, 106, 110, Consumer 10, 22, 27, 34, 43, 49, 56, 115, 126, 148, 166n.3, 170 58, 65, 90, 93, 154, 155; advocacy Booth, Wayne 38, 171 88, 140, 156; blamed 104; boycott Bramwell, Anna 66, 69, 78, 85, 171

184 Index 53, 125; defined 8; folk memory 122; goods 54; groups 88; interpolation 91; as political actor 94; potential in Third World 106; scepticism 92, 118, 119, 138; spending 54 Consumerism 28, 56, 58, 67, 83; campaigns to reduce 90; defined 8-9; and ecofeminism 76; emergence of, chap. 2, 44, 46, 47, 50, 53; and environmental movement, chap. 3; promotion of 54; as site of political struggle 71, 159; and women 8, 108 Consumption 10, 13, 18, 24, 33, 42, 71, 78, 86, 95, 104, 127, 151; as epidemic 61; history of, chap. 2, 46, 48 Contagion 42, 55, 59-62, 71, 91 Cranston, Carolyn 92, 118, 171 Culture 23, 30, 32, 41, 43, 50, 51, 53, 57, 58, 59, 73, 83, 98, no, 113, 159, 163; genuine 120; promotional 122

Dadd, Debra Lynn 104, 141, 150, 167 chap. 4 n.2; 171 Dagnoli, Judann 95, 98, 171 Daly, Herman 77, 78, 82, 171, 172 Davidson, Martin 122, 172 Davis, Joel 107, 118, 119, 120, 172 Dixon, Beth 74, 172 Dobson, Andrew 66, 71, 74, 75, 83, 86, 100, 103, 172 Douglas, Mary 109, 172 Deep ecology 43, 49, 126, 141; see also Radical ecology Development 4, 105-106, 136, 137, 145; less industrialized cultures 36; Third World invisibility 32 Discourse, defined 10

Eckersley, Robyn 74, 75, 172 Ecofeminism 74-76, 108, 109; birthing thesis 74-5, 76; oppression argument 75-76 Ecological 34, 4, 53; crisis 3, 4, 7, 12, 37; defined 11 Ecologism 31, 66 Ecosocialism 72-73 Ekins, Paul 68, 69, 70, 77, 78, 172 Elkington, John 78, 94, 97, 100, 106, 118, 148, 156, 172 Emulation 42, 51-5, 59, 64 Environmental 12; critiques 33; defined 11; movement and consumption; chap. 3 Environmental politics 21, 71, 89; division into reformists and radicals 66; see also Radical ecology, Ecofeminism, Ecosocialism Environmentalists 5, 23, 43, 68, 88, 111 Epistemology 6, 11, 24, 36, 40, 84, 85, 92, 132, 146 Evans, Malcolm 122, 163, 180 Evernen, Neil 167 n.3, 173 Ewen, Stuart, 120, 173 False consciousness 100, 110-113, 118, 12O-1211

Fielding, Henry 45-6, 47, 48, 51, 55, 56, 57, 59, 63, 173 Fisher, Christy 139, 173 Fitzgerald, Neil 141, 173 Girardet, Herbert 99, 101-103, 113, 114-115, 127, 148, 179 Goodin, Robert 67, 80, 82, 85, 86, 101, 112, 126, 152, 153, 157, 166 chap. 3 n.1, 173 Gramsci, Antonio 14, 16-20, 24, 173;

Index 185 historical block 16, 17, 19, 20, 26; ensemble 17-18; war of position 20, 22; intellectuals and leaders 27-29, 137, 139, 140, 157 Green, defined 11; see also Environmental, Environmentalists, Environmental politics Green consumerism 4, 10, 12, 13, 15, 19, 34, 37, 43, 53, 56, 60, 67, 72, 73, 78, 145, 152, 153, 158; as act of faith 89; as coordinating agent 133; as critique 11, 23, 108; defined 89-97; and healthfulness 90; and linear time 36; as myth 5, 7, 15, 21, 24, 27, 31, 32, 33, 36, 43, 52, 89, 125, 135, 145, 151, 153, 159-161; and narrative 33-41; as popular discourse 97-100, 150; shopping guides 98-9,

IBM 22, 26, 92, 125, 127-138, 140, 146, 150, 151; CFC use 134; reproduction of advertisement 128-9; and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 133-4 Ideology 21, 27, 30, 31, 40, 58, 69, 79, 104, 108, 120; ecologism as, 66; greening of, 72 Industrialization 4, 6, 26, 70-71, 106, 162 Information = knowledge = power 112-116, 135 Interdisciplinary 12, 14 Irvine, Sandy 70, 72, 81, 89, 96, 99, 104, 105, 107, 110, 112-113, n6, 127, 148, 166n.2, 174 Jay, Leslie 97, 174

101

Guha, Ramachandra 82, 173 Hailes, Julia 94, 97, 106, 156, 172 Harmony 32, 39, 76, 81, 86, no, 115, 126, 152-153; in IBM advertisement 127-131,135-137;andShell145-146 Hay, Colin 72, 73, 174 Hayes, Denis, 118-119, 174 Hebdige, Dick 55, 174 Hegemony 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 15-29, 32, 33, 55, 115, 122, 125, 135, 145, 162; defined 16; and narrative 33-41 Historiography; narrative substance 12; and narrative theory 38 Households 8, 76, 108-109,164;gifts 109; social bonds 109-110 Human nature 6, 8, 24, 32, 52, 53; fixed 41-6, 49, 50, 51, 58, 62, 116, 117; see also Emulation, Ref inability Hume, Scott 148; 167 chap. 4 n.2, 174

Kellner, Douglas 111, 175 King, Ynestra 74, 175 Kleiner, Art 149, 156, 167 chap. 4 n.2, 175 Laclau, Ernesto 10, 24-26, 175 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 31-2, 167 n.1, 175 Langer, Julia 107 Lawrence, Jennifer 140, 150, 166 chap. 4 n.2, 175 Leadership 16, 19, 22, 27-29, 43, 46, 58, 92, 124, 133, 137-140, 151, 156-157; McDonald's 147-149, 156, 157; Mobil 149-150; Shell 144-147, 168 chap. 5 n.4; Wal-Mart 156 Lesh, Carolyn 107, 156, 176 Levi-Strauss, Claude 31, 151, 176 Liberal democracy 11, 22, 23, 29, 30, 32, 72-73, 79, 80, 84, 139, 154, 155, 156-157, 160

186 Index Lifestyle 93-94, 103, 108, 122 Luke, Timothy 90, 99, 104, 105, 108, 176 Mandeville, Bernard 52, 59, 63, 163, 176 Marcuse, Herbert 110-111, 176 Marketing 18, 94, 97, 99, 125, 139, 152; campaigns 90, 94-5; Mobil 150; public relations campaigns 39 Marketism 155 Marxism 17, 18, 19, 20, 72, 73, 98, 120 Matthews, Eric 85, 176 McCloskey, Donald 36, 37-38, 40, 50, 132, 176 McDonald's 16, 125, 147-149, 155-156, 157, 167 chap. 4 n.2 Mclntosh, Andrew 89, 97, 103, 166 chap. 4 n.1, 176 McKendrick Neil 44, 47, 52, 53, 55, 56, 62, 176 Mellor, Mary 71, 107-108, 109, 112, 126, 148, 164, 176 Mercantilism 42-6, 51, 55, 56, 61, 63, 106 Mies, Maria 90, 93-94, 106, 107, 108-109, 176, 177 Miller, Daniel 162, 177 Mobil Chemical Company 21, 27, 28, 107, 149-150 153, 155 Mouffe, Chantal 10, 16, 24-26, 177 Myth 4, 7, 15, 29-33, 37, 5O, 58, 91, 132, 151; actualization of 53; as historiography 165n.1; and narrative 33-41; as story 30; Naess, Arne 66, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 111, 114, 125, 177 Nancy, Jean-Luc 31-2, 167n.1, 175

Narrative 15, 27, 30 32, 33-41, 62, 122, 132, 145, 151, 154, 160 Narrative substance 12, 63, 132, 165n.1; see also Ankersmit, F.R. Nash, Roderick 67, 69, 80, 177 Nature 51, 57, 60, 61, 81, 82, 83, 86, 131, 154; as harmony 127, 137, 152-3; see also Human nature Need 9, 46, 62, 69, 85, 111, 113, 116-117, 155 O'Connor, James 73, 177 Oldland 139, 177 Oliff, Michael 95,180 Ontology 6, 11, 13, 24, 42, 65, 73, 81, 84, 86, 117, 163, 164 Paehlke, Robert 69, 116, 177 Parkin, Sara 67, 68, 177 Peak, Martha 138, 177 Pearce, David 78, 177 Perkin, Harold 47, 52, 53, 54, 61, 177 Peterson, Robin 120, 177 Plumb, J.H. 44, 47, 52, 53, 55, 56, 62, 176 Plumwood, Val 75, 76, 178 Ponton, Alec 70, 72, 81, 105, no, 112, 127, 148, 166 chap. 3 n.2, 174 Porritt, Jonathan 66, 69, 71, 72, 81, 82, 84, 85, 96, 98, 103, 105, 178 Productivism 5, 9, 12, 24-27, 43, 65, 102, 108, 109, 133, 151, 156, 158; defined 10-11; and ecofeminism 76; and hegemony 15-29; and myth 29-33, 89; and narrative 33-41; and nature 60; totalizing 73 Radical ecology 13, 24, 43, 49, 67-87,

Index 187 106, 134; see also Environmental politics Refinability 42, 49, 56-58 Ricoeur, Paul 34, 35, 36, 37, 178 Roddick, Anita 106, 156 Rogers, Raymond 60-61, 178 Ross, Cecily 95, 178 Rothnie-Jones, Delia 141, 167 chap. 4 n.2, 178

Street, John 155, 180 Strenski, Ivan 30 Sustainability 12, 73, 76, 83 Sutter, Stan 95, 180 Suture 6, 7, 23, 24, 31, 33, 38, 40, 92, 125; Shell 144, 145

Time, linear conception of 34-36 Todorov, Tzvetan 37, 38, 39, 132, 144, 180 Salleh, Ariel 76, 77, 179 The Other Economic Summit (TOES) Sandilands, Catriona 97, 108, 179 77 Schudson, Michael 109, 179 Tokar, Brian 67, 69, 81, 127, 180 Science 6, 12, 13, 40, 41, 60, 84, 92, 97, Tomlinson, Alan 120-121, 180 102, 116, 117, 133, 137, 139, 144, 146, Turner, R. Kerry 78, 180 149, 153, 159; physics 36; scientism 153 Valentine, Virginia 122, 163, 180 Seikatsu Club 107 Vandermerwe, Sandra 95, 180 Seymour, John 99, 101-103,113, 114-115, Veblen, Thorstein 52, 53, 121, 180 127, 148, 179 Verene, Donald 125, 167n.1, 180 Shell Chemicals 29, 92, 124, 141-146, Vichert, Gordon 52, 60, 180 150, 151, 156; reproduction of advertisement 143, 167-168n.4 Walker, Stuart 90, 180 Wal-Mart 125, 139-140, 155-156, 157 Slotkin, Richard 32, 131, 151, 179 Smith, Adam 8, 10, 45, 47, 48, 62-63, Wells, Liz 120, 180 64, 80, 148, 154, 179 Wernick, Andrew 121-122, 163, 181 White, Hayden 39, 41, 147, 181 Smith, Geddes 59, 179 Social levelling 49, 52, 55-57, 62, 105; Winner, David 66, 81, 82, 84, 85, 96, 178 see also Class Socialist ecofeminism 76 Williams, Raymond 20, 24, 26, 44, 46, Sorel, George 110-111,167 chap. 5 n.2, 48, 181 179 Williamson, Judith 120, 181 Status 54-55, 57, 67 Stewart, Thomas 95, 179 Xenos, Nicholas 48-49, 57-58, 146, 181